George Landow, Hypertext 2.0

I am afraid we are not getting rid of God because we still believe in grammar.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

Something that struck me as I was making my way through the first four chapters of Hypertext 2.0 again was the question of agency. In a book called Virtual Reality and its Discontents, there's an essay by Richard Grusin that takes Landow (among others) to task for attributing agency to technology. In other words, Grusin objects to the way that many of those writing about technology treat hypertext/multimedia/computers as if the hardware or software is actually doing something independent of human or cultural activity.

The citation above from Nietzsche is one of my favorites; it reminds me that whether or not language actually does something, it certainly provides conditions of (im)possibility for the ways we think. Does language do this, or do we do it inadvertently by entering into language, an entrance we rarely have much control over? I'm not sure, and that uncertainty infects my readings of both Grusin and Landow. On the one hand, when I read passages like the following from Landow,

Just as hypertext as an education medium transforms the teacher from a leader into a kind of coach or companion, hypertext as a writing medium metamorphoses the author into an editor or developer (114).

my initial reaction is to respond that hypertext itself doesn't really do that. Hypertext doesn't simply walk into the class one day, and surprise the teacher-leader, turning her into a teacher-coach. I don't know that there will ever be a time when hypertext as a medium becomes the norm for a writing course, but until it does, I suspect that a teacher's self-perception (leader or coach) will precede and likely influence the decision to employ hypertext.

On the other hand, the existence of hypertext (and of hypertexts) begins to affect that self-perception before a teacher even enters the classroom. There are plenty of instructors in this program who, ten years ago, wouldn't have thought twice about hypertext or the web. They may not be integrating those media into their courses yet, but now, they are faced with the prospect of rationalizing that decision.

Which is all to say that while I am sympathetic to Grusin's position, I'm not sure that the pendulum of agency needs to swing from technology at one apex to humans at the other. It's more of a chicken/egg (which came first?) issue for me, and from that perspective, I'm not certain that it's any more correct to say that "The teacher who uses hypertext transforms herself from a leader into a kind of coach or companion." Whatever else we can say about electronic media, I think that we can say that they are not tools in the functional, instrumental sense, any more than language is.

At the end of his post, Don argues that we should be thinking about "influence" rather than "control" when we consider the author/reader dynamic, and I agree, but would add that in some ways, our language is set up to speak of relationships of control much more effectively than it is relationships of influence. To say that "Noun verbs an object" is to elevate the noun over the object at the level of grammar, and it's at that level that I find Grusin's critique more compelling. We are still learning how to talk about the transformative capabilities of our technologies.

Collin Gifford Brooke