Form / Function redux.
The classic expository paragraph form is undoubtedly suitable for many
types of expression. And I've already admitted (or at least hinted) that I
have a love/hate relationship with it. But do I really need all these links? Can't
I just say what I want without making the reader jump back and forth from page
to page?
In my defense I can perhaps claim that it's in the nature of associative writing
(and particularly of associative writing that over the years becomes its own frame
of reference) that it reminds us of where we've already traveled, that the map
of the territory once covered seems to attach itself to the new maps that are
forever being drawn. Form following function is, for instance, one such territory.
I've used the phrase a number of times in these pages. Perhaps predictably, the
first time was the summer of four years ago when
(as with this column) I didn't have constant
access to a computer during much of the writing of the column, and thus I made
notes to myself which later were almost literally cut and pasted into a (hopefully
consistent) whole. The second time was two years
ago when I tried to justify a plethora of seemingly insignificant links by
claiming that they reflected the nature of the topic under discussion.
And from those examples perhaps I can reach a slightly larger generalization.
On the one hand, as one link after another has been included into these pages,
the entirety of the Boidem has grown into a highly developed hypertextual environment.
On the other, the very nature of the writing that fills up the Boidem creates
(perhaps demands) that hypertextual environment. Rather than being a question
of growth, it's perhaps a realization, an unfolding, of its true nature that is
taking place.
Go to: The shackles are my own, or
Go to: The (ir)relevance of hypertext