2.17.2004
Hypertext and De-centering
http://www.victorianweb.org/cpace/ht/jhup/decenter.html
Landow, George. "Hypertext and De-Centering." Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
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Landow states that hypertext is more empowering to the reader than traditional books (and often more difficult to read) because it is centerless. Without a center, and with the links of hypertext, readers are allowed, even forced, to use their own personal experience to determine where their center is and how it shifts as the reading of hypertext progresses. Decentering occurs while reading traditional books as well, as they are also often intertextual, but hypertext is much less linear; it often acts, as Landow writes, as "a transient center" for related information.
______________________________________________________________
Landow states that hypertext is more empowering to the reader than traditional books (and often more difficult to read) because it is centerless. Without a center, and with the links of hypertext, readers are allowed, even forced, to use their own personal experience to determine where their center is and how it shifts as the reading of hypertext progresses. Decentering occurs while reading traditional books as well, as they are also often intertextual, but hypertext is much less linear; it often acts, as Landow writes, as "a transient center" for related information.
