Moulthrop,
S; "You Say You Want a Revolution? Hypertext and the Laws of Media",
in
The New Media Reader, edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort,
Cambridge and London, MIT Press; 2003.
Stuart Moulthrop's essay "You
Say You Want a Revolution?" originally appeared in 1991 in Postmodern
Culture, edited by E. Umiran and J. Unsworth. The fluidly written text is divided into
roughly six distinct sections: a theoretical introduction, examinations of
hypertext according to each of Marshall McLuhan's "Laws of Media",
and a brief conclusion. As a point of
departure Moulthrop reviews the history of the concept of Hypertext. He argues that when the essay first appeared,
hypertext was relatively unknown, yet the concepts hypertext enables extends as
far back as Vannevar Bush's Memex.
Moulthrop focuses his discussion on Theodor
Holm Nelson as a central theorist of Hypertext.
Nelson, working in the 1960's, coined the term hypertext, and developed
a model for a worldwide network of information he called 'Xanadu' many years
prior to the advent of the internet, even prior to the advent of the personal
computer. Moulthrop outlines and
examines Nelsons propositions in great detail, focussing on Nelsons statement
that "tomorrows hypertext have immense political ramifications". Yet, at the time of writing, Nelson points
out the startling absence of the information revolution that was anticipated to
change the way we read, write and think.
Nelson touches briefly on many other theorists who in their work
anticipated the change brought about by hypertext, and sets out the shifting
interest, and expectations, from one 'bleeding edge' technology to the next. It is at this point that Moulthrop arrives at
the central proposition of this text, the (mis)understanding of technology and
revolution within the postmodern framework.
In the examination of the political and social ramifications of
hypertext and other information sharing systems that follows Moulthrop
continually returns to the definition and expectations of revolution,
contrasting and comparing.
In all of these investigations
Nelson's conceptualisation of Xanadu takes centre stage as the analysed
example. Eventually Moulthrop arrives at
the uncompleted final work of Marshall McLuhan, the fourfold "Laws of
Media", which where to "form a framework for a semiotics of technology" (Moulthrop
,697). These laws pose four questions
that can be asked of any invention, assessing the extent of which it is
transformative in its field. Moulthrop
proceeds by asking each of these questions of Hypertext, and evaluating the
results. What does Hypertext Enhance or
Intensify? What does Hypertext Displace
or Render Obsolete? What does Hypertext
retrieve that was Previously Obsolete? What
does Hypertext become when taken to its Limit?
Moulthrop examines these questions
in relation to hypertext in great detail, concentrating on a post-modern
analysis of socio-political implications, again returning occasionally to
Xanadu to concretise the theory in practical example. In conclusion he returns to the question he
posed at the beginning of the text: "Do we really want a revolution?"
(Moulthrop, 703) As well as using Xanadu
to concretise the question, he examines the political climate at the time,
sighting examples of resurfacing conservatism and economic pressures. His conclusion still however remains hopeful,
if cautionary: "Yet, in the face of
all this we can still fond visionary souls who say they want textual, social,
cultural, intelectual revolution. In the
words of Lennon: Well, you know… We all want to change your head. The question remains: which heads do the
changing, and which get changed?" (Moulthrop, 703)
