What is a page?
If you speak English (and you are reading this, so let’s assume you do), it’s likely that you have quite a good grasp of what “page” means: a thing you write and thus read on.
But the etymology of “page” uncovers deeper connotations behind the word. “Page” comes from Old French, pangere to “mark the boundaries of”, or to “fasten”. Pangere was also used to describe the bounds one entered into in a contract. This is the essence of the word, to structure something as to be presented in a singularly comprehensible way. It reflects the physical, linear nature of the book; and earlier than that, the codex; earlier than that, the scroll and so on.
The page and its predecessors afforded the presentation of information in a linear fashion, meant for linear comprehension. There was simply no feasible way of writing in more than one dimension on these media.
Writing from thousands of years ago is fundamentally the same as today in format
Writing has been bound to its media since its inception. More than bound, the media that we write on have come to structure how we write and read, and how we expect to read and write. In writing we are “bound” or “fastened” to medium, which as noted, is linear format. This, however, is not reflected in how we think or how we hold conversations. Think about the idiosyncratic, branching, and unexpected way conversations proceed. Famously, Socrates refused to write anything down — he felt that “dead” paper was incapable of truly expressing thought and discourse. Our brains themselves are not even linear structures, or even branching tree structures, but rather networks of neurons and synapses that fire multilaterally.
Yet in creating the web Tim Berners-Lee, following the lead of Vannevar Bush with his Memex, chose to replicate the concept of the page in a digital format. The web, then, like other computer applications (files, folders etc.) were based on a metaphor of the physical.
In being bound to metaphors of paper, digital text inherited the limitations of the linearity of the physical page. And despite the addition of a futuristic sounding prefix, hypertext lacked invention with regards to the fundamental character of writing and reading.
Certainly, hyperlinks embedded in text were a novel creation in that they allowed different pages to connect to one another within the context of a sentence. This of course impacted the connectivity between writing, but not the writing itself. Pages themselves were and are still read in a singularly linear format. As professor of information Andrew Dillon noted:
“Hypertexts, despite their node and link structure, are still composed of units of text and there is no reason to believe that, at the paragraph level at least, these are read any differently from units of conventional paper or other electronic text”. -
But linear writing needn’t exist on the web, since the web could facilitate writing of a fundamental different character than traditional writing — one which could cut across and through dimensions of understanding and perspective.
Dimension of literature
Dimensions: think stratified layers. Imagine these layers of writing, eroded or aggregated for different readers. Or picture writing on branches, which twist and split, yet all emanate from the same root. Imagine writing akin to a conversation, not because it is idiomatic and shorthand, but because it can go any direction — it is subject to interactions with the viewer/reader/listener. The focus, in this sense, could be participatory rather than unilaterally ascribed linearity.
But return to the page, and its linear, bounded format. This primacy of bounded linearity underscores the importance of telling, or depicting, rather than exploring. Articles, then, drive towards a primary point, the theses, as defined by the author. The act of writing an “article” (increasingly an vague term) either implicitly or explicitly has this framework (this article as included).
It is arguable, then, that writing — the bounded linear structure — behoves the arguer, the writer, the teller, but not the reader. The reader, the self-driven exploratory learner, is damned to a fractured relationship between individual static texts. The reader, left to her own devices, works to find additional texts when clarity in singular texts are insufficient.
The closest we have come to user-centred reading…
Of course the primacy of this framework, increasingly, is subject to question, certainly in part due to our shorter attention spans and the simplicity with which we can be distracted by competing digital information. How does a writer-centred text structure itself within the digital sphere of feeds and notifications? The reader has ever increasing reasons to discontinue following a single thread.
But more than potentially being anachronistic, the focus-oriented linear article contains other delimiting characteristics. It assumes that each person has the same breadth and depth of knowledge; it is insensitive to the peculiarities of the reader.
Theory aside, new dimensions in writing/reading are reified in specific web applications — some of which are (unfortunately barely) in use today. These dimensions embody a branching, layered structure while doing away with the limitations of the page.
Here’s just a few.
Stretch-text
Reader-centred writing is exemplified in stretch text. Stretch text was a concept developed by Ted Nelson (creator of a competitor to HTML) in 1967. In essence, stretch allows users to determine the level of detail of a document.
Below is really simple javascript example which typifies stretch text, which seemingly should be a basic, hard-coded part of the web (or a given part of any CMS)
A simple but incredibly powerful concept, dropdowns or accordions exist in interface interactions, but not as a dimension of digital literature. There’s no reason that this is so other than the seemingly innate conservatism we have towards literacy.
This user-centred form of reading allows readers to have concepts they may not understand explained to them, and readers who understand these concepts not to be bogged down by heavy headed expositions. It can help battle some fundamental limitations of writing, of which Socrates details quite nicely:
“When it has once been written down, every discourse roams about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn’t know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not.”
Stretchtext also allows those readers who find particular topics fascinating to pursue them in the context and voice of the article. As George Landow says in Hypertext 3.0:
Stretchtext does not fragment the text like other forms of hypermedia. Instead, it retains the text on the screen that provides a context to an anchor formed by word or phrase even after it has been activated.
Users needn’t leave a page to pursue a topic, fragmenting their experience. Similar to Stretchtext, modular forms of writing can cultivate a reader-centred experience.
Modularity
While expandable content reaches into the authors content repertoire, modularity reaches into the web to pull content into articles.
Take BBC labs’ Explainers.
In it, simply however over a keyword pulls out relevant content from other articles as a popup.
Establishing a keywords as gateways to pull in content from other articles allows users to see definitions of concepts they may be disinclined to investigate should they be required to leave the page. The ease of use by virtue of simply resting a cursor should not be overstated, nor should the barrier of commitment involved on clicking a link be understated; numerous studies have shown users are disinclined to click links to investigate topics.
Inline Dialectics
The degree of polarisation in socio-political discourse seems to parallel the degree to which digital media is present in our lives, which is of course on a soaring upswing. Whereas The Digital once promised cosmopolitan worldliness, increasingly our news sources are filtered through outlets that represent our most niche of beliefs, and are thronged by scores of like minded commenters banging the drum of groupthink. Over the next few years,
“the online environment may erode editorial influence over the public’s agenda as a result of the multiplications of news outlets and the resulting fragmentation of the audience”
Pablo Javier Boczkowski and Eugenia Mitchelstein say, authors of The News Gap.
Groupthink and polarisation, of course, are exemplified by the linear and the bounded. In environments with high walls intended to keep out external voices, echoes tend to be more resonant.
What I’m referring to as in-line dialectics then, can eat away at this rabid insularity. In-line dialectics is writing that argues with itself — for each point made an opposing, contradictory point can be seen. Take this example I developed for this article, below:
Here in line text sidles up next to the current article. Distracting, yes, but the point is too force the reader to engage with opposing viewpoints. Beyond that, a function such as this is far more immediately relevant than those digital distractions pressing upon a user at any given moment. This, at least, provides an opposing view to the reader, without requiring the reader’s ability, volition (or even intent) to seek it out.
Picture this normalised: text that was structured with opposing points built into it. Singular points from either viewpoint can be traced against one another. The reader can opt, with minimal effort, to see an inline dialectic. Where once we witnessed the words of sole demagogues, we could instead witness the dialogue of two interlocutors.
A preemptive response
There’s an argument that what I present here is tantamount to endorsing a celebration of our inability to focus, of our collective ADHD.
But focus can continue in a more superordinate sense; that is, the focus is on a larger topic with a free range to explore within that topic or argument. Focus too moves from writer to reader.
An argument could also be made that in moving from the focus from writer to reader points, arguments, syllogisms cannot be made — we would wander through information senselessly. But firstly, reader-centred writing doesn’t preclude more writer-centred reading, it can sit along side it. Moreover, none of what has been suggested precludes the fundamental premise-conclusion format of an thesis, rather, it simply creates a interactive, branching format to that conclusion. In doing so a reader gets a more evocative, personal picture that works to inform them rather than simply telling them. Writers may protest, but with new dimensions of reading come new potentials for writers.
But aside from the potential disruption of the sacrosanct writer-reader paradigm, reader-centered writing can progress beyond relatively unimaginative conceptions of the web. Writing is a vast component of the web, but the web isn’t writing, it is information, and information is, to again reference Ted Nelson, “Intertwingled”:
“EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED. In an important sense there are no “subjects” at all; there is only all knowledge, since the cross-connections among the myriad topics of this world simply cannot be divided up neatly.”
Information isn’t a page, bounded and linear. It is cross-cut, interwoven and multi-dimensional. Information is our lived, real world, and our world isn’t bound to singular linear focus. Our writing and reading shouldn’t be either.