From Papyrus to Hypertext
Above all, by making it possible to combine writing, image, sound, and video, the new computer technologies are undermining the dominant position of language, stripping it of the aura with which it has been invested since ancient times when it was used to magically address the world, to express a relationship to reality, and to hold the tribe under its charms. (166)
Arranged in forty sections, each of which more or less concentrated on a theme (given in the headings), that are not intended to be read in any particular order (according to the author), but naturally tend to be read in the order in which they are presented in the codex. This seems to be an intentional comment on the medium and the mass-age, as well as encapsulating what makes the book somewhat annoying and less than illuminating. While anxious about the character of text on screen at the page level, as well as the permutations of text’s combinations with other media types (images, video, etc., as though illustrated scrolls or codices were somehow peculiar), it concerns itself too little with those in control of filling those screens (the author, it seems, is not quite dead here – only the publisher).
Originally published in French in 1999, perhaps what was novel about the book at the time had become commonplace by the time it was published in translation in 2009 and has certainly become so by 2025. Within its focus, prescient enough, but in terms of the broader implications there is a sort of willful blindness, a lack of desire to see the forest for the leaves.
In actual fact, there is no need for such a bill of rights [for readers] to be enacted, as it will eventually come about of itself. A text can attract readers and hold their attention only insofar as they feel respected. A reader who is not satisfied by a work will soon abandon it. (127)