Contours of Constructive Hypertexts

MarkBernstein

Eastgate Systems, Inc.
134 Main Street, Watertown MA 02172 USA
Michael Joyce

Jackson Community College
Vassar College
David Levine

Gettysburg College
168466.168517.pdf969.81 KB

Abstract

Discussion of hypertext rhetoric and criticism has focused on small, freed hypertext that are typically used by casual readers for comparatively short periods. Here we explore complex, constructive hypertext, intended to inform and to influence dedicated and thoughtful readers. Recurrence and multivalence, both deplored in small hypertext, prove from study of more complex texts to be very valuable. While static, graph-theoretic measures facilitate understanding of local hypertext structure, the structures of meaning or contours we observe in current hypertext fiction and scholarship do not appear to reside in static structures, but rather in the complex and dynamic perceptions of the engaged reader.
The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale...
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

1 Introduction

How can we describe our experience of large and complex hypertexts—hypertexts intended to inform and influence a dedicated, thoughtful reader?
Discussion of hypertext design, hypertext rhetoric, and indeed of the merits and faults of hypertext itself, has often focused narrowly upon the role of isolated links. Calls for “structured” hypertext while emphasizing the complexity of large hypertext, have limited their attention to simple, recursively defined aggregates. In contrast, we argue that complex hypertexts are not simply expanded versions of small hypertext and propose some initial steps toward a vocabulary for better understanding large hypertext.
Understanding of small-scale hypertextual phenomena while still incomplete, is comparatively well advanced. Considerable effort has been devoted to promulgating rules for effectively placing and explaining hypertext links (e.g., [5,25,35]). Indeed, discussion of the merits and faults of hypertext has, since Conklin’s review [10], centered on the alleged tension between the expressiveness of individual links and the additional complexity or “cognitive overhead” which the presence of links imposes on the reader [8,9,16]. Prescriptive, formal models have been proposed to discipline link creation and enforce consistency [11,23], taxonomies of links have been proposed [15], and clinical studies (e.g. [20,47,48]) have sought to compare the efficiency of link traversal to conventional access strategies. Belief networks [22], retrieval models [12], guides [37], and apprentices [3] have been developed to help readers choose among links.
While these studies have yielded a wealth of valuable material, they share (perhaps of necessity) a simple but unrealistic view of readers and reading. Empirical studies have emphasized retrieval speed and efficiency because retrieval is easy to measure. Retrieval of facts, however, is but one of myriad ways we use written information, indeed, compared to the influence that an important textbook or favorite poem may exert on our character, or an influential research study or theoretical analysis upon our professional lives, retrieval seems neither a very common nor a very important activity. The intrinsic complexity of real texts has been obscured too, by the assumption that texts have a single purpose or intention. Few texts are one-dimensional, and truly single-purpose texts are almost always ephemeral (business cards, advertisements, audit records) or archival (laws, voter lists). Meaningful documents, even on paper, are multivalent and polyvocal [4].
In contemplating the atomic act of link traversal we may lose sight of larger structures. The literature is replete with calls for “structured hypertext” [16] and taxonomies of hypertext structure [49], yet the proposed structures are either very small or very simple. The rhetoric of hypertext rhetoric, too, has been confined to small scale, Landow, for example, addresses points of departure and arrival [35], while Evenson and Rheinfrank propose a visual language for typographical representation of isolated links [21].
Many of the most exciting developments in hypertext systems have applied knowledge representation to create local hypertext structures and behaviors, but these, too, involve comparatively small structures. SEPIA [55], MacWeb [46] and Aquanet [40] let authors express relationships among typed nodes and links, providing a rich vocabulary of local structure. Explicit representation promotes local coherence and consistency, permitting authors to express systematic relationships (e.g. between artist and artifact) in a manner which can be grasped and anticipated by the reader, searched by a query system, or used as a basis for computation. In some sense these local structures function as rich metanodes which are themselves linked across a network of metanodes, Thus even these subtle and flexible systems express essentially local relations among clusters of entities.

2 Learning From Hypertext Fiction

Hypertext rhetoric should be grounded in critical examination of actual hypertext. In the absence of a hypertext literature, early writers had no choice but to extrapolate from their expectations or their own initial experiments. A purely theoretic approach is hazardous, for hypertext are not electronic simulations of printed books:
To require hypertext to function like a book is a bit like expecting a jetliner to behave like a locomotive: yes it’s very fast, but the blasted thing won’t stay on the rails. [42]
Technological changes may have unforeseen impact; Bolter has shown that an innovation in binding technology, the codex, transformed the scale and conception of literary work [7], while Landow notes that a technical change in page layout (the introduction of spaces between words in manuscripts) changed reading from a vocal and public performance to a silent personal activity [36].
It is now (barely) possible to ground a discussion of hypertext rhetoric in actual hypertexts—texts which have been deliberately crafted by writers who devoted substantial efforts and resources to the task, and whose reputation rests in some measure with the quality of the result. The body of hypertext literature remains sparse, and some titles are so specialized in topic (e.g. military equipment maintenance) or intended audience (e.g. preliterate children) that it seems dangerous to generalize from them. Many of today’s best-known hypertext, moreover, are works of fiction. Some techniques of fiction are specialized, yet we believe that insights from fiction can often be applied to technical and scholarly writing.
The chasm between fiction and technicrd communication is less formidable than it sometimes appears. Effective language, informative organization, dramatic integrity and engagement challenge all writers, regardless of genre or medium. This approach is not particularly novel, as Laurel [37] has applied lessons from classical drama to user interface design and Peter Bøgh Anderson [6] uses semiotic concepts from cinema to understand hypertextual transitions. Earlier, Harnmet and Hemingway adopted the discourse of journalism to the service of fiction. Where the novelist seeks an extensible, constructive hypertext, a “form for what does not yet exist” [28], the engineer cites a need for “information [which] constantly evolves as people contribute parts to a conceptually interconnected web.” [38].

3 Recurrence is not a defect

As hypertext readers travel through a document, they may return to places they have previously visited. The impact of unexpected repetition can be startling; Bernstein [2] introduced the use of breadcrumbs specifically to alert readers to the possibility of revisiting a recently-visited place. Rouet [51] assumes that revisiting a hypertext node is evidence of disorientation.
This perception is fundamentally wrong. In small hypertext, to be sure, recurrence is boring. Recurrence is unhelpful, too, in hypertextual encyclopedias and reference manuals which are meant to be consulted in brief episodes. In complex hypertext, on the other hand, recurrence is not a defect repetition provides a powerful structural force, a motif which helps readers synthesize the experience of the reading. Rhythms of recurrence announce patterns of meaning.
Malloy’s its name was Penelope is a radically “chunky” hypertext a dense network of very short, almost stylized texts representing fragmentary memories of an artist’s girlhood, professional life, and love affairs [39]. Repetitions help modulate the story, superimposing an irregular secondary rhythm of repetition on the uniformity of successive, brief passages. Moreover, the passages themselves contain internal quotations and allusions; a passage which the reader has not seen before may recall an earlier node, and may itself be called to mind when the earlier node is revisited. Similarly, Joyce’s Afternoon [29] exploits textual cycles to represent (and, simultaneously, to deny the possibility of) closure [18].
These are not mere artistic effects. Examine, say, a university physics text, and you will find conservation of momentum and energy expressed over and over again, in different contexts and guises, to ensure that students truly understand. Recurrence communicates the existence of structure, the linkage among ideas which weaves disparate facts and arguments into a single coherent work.

4 Multivalence is not a vice

Repetition also opens the possibility of multivalent passages, episodes whose meaning changes when revisited because the reader has gained new understanding or insight. Formal, prescriptive approaches to hypertext have usually regarded multivalence as undesirable, preferring to assign an explicitly-represented role (or role set) to each writing space (cf. [11,23]). In large and complex hypertext, however, multivalent writing is neither undesirable nor, indeed, avoidable.
Consider, for example, the role of Emily Runbird’s death in Stuart Moulthrop’s novel of the Gulf War, Victory Garden [41]. Emily is a graduate student who, by virtue of her ROTC scholarship, finds herself stationed in Saudi Arabia. In some readings of Victory Garden, Emily is killed by a SCUD missile. The meaning of many passagesis changed by Emily’s death; passages that had one meaning while Emily is believed to be safely ensconced in the desert mailroom mean something else entirely after we are led to suspect that Emily has been killed. Her sister, Veronica, is brooding and irritable. Does her unease mirror her professor’s irritation with patriarchal politics, or does it arise from her intuitive consciousness that her sister’s life has just ended in flames? Elsewhere, another student, Jude, seduces Emily’s lover while wearing a blonde wig. Is Jude a tramp, callously seducing Emily’s lover while Emily is at war? Or is her impersonation a reincarnation, a purifying ritual, a gesture that life will go on? Meaning emerges not from a single sequence or interpretation but from the coalescenceof multiple readings [17].
Hypertext, after all, was originally motivated by the realization that a single passage may play several different roles in discourse. Discussion of a single astronomical object, say M31, may appear in an astronomy text as an example of a gaseous nebula, as an object of interest to archaeoastronomy, as the home of a pulsar, or as a pretty object to look for on a warm summer evening. Indeed, technical texts deliberately reuse examples not because of a shortage of material, but in order to establish relationships within a discipline. The same chemical reaction may be cited as an elementary example, may appear elsewhere as a useful synthetic tool, and be cited in yet another context as evidence for a mechanistic theory. If a text is large enough and important enough to change the reader, multivalence expresses that change, and recurrence makes that change apparent.
Recurrent structures can also be seen as an author’s instantiation of the ephemeral memories of creating a text which itself anticipates the reader’s instantiation of similar (though not identical) structures. This “constantly replaced present tense” of hypertext contours [31] calls to mind Eco’s intention of the text:
A text is a device conceived in order to produce its model reader ... The empirical reader is only an actor who makes conjectures about the kind of model reader postulated by the text. Since the intention of the text (intentio operis) is basically to produce a model reader able to make conjectures about it, the initiative of the model reader consists in figuring out a model author that is not the empirical one and that, in the end, coincides with the intention of the text. Thus ... the text is an object that the interpretation builds up in the course of the circular effort of validating itself on the bash of what it makes up as its result. [19]
As hypertext dissoIves the distinction between readers and writers, each reader forms her own working model of the intention of the text, appropriating the role of Eco’s model author.

5 Depth and Contour

As the text discloses its shape and intention to the reader, the reader creates hypothetical predictions of its shape and possible continuations. These expectations change as the reader examines the work more completely, much as our interpretation of a painting changes while we look at it. The eye perceives suggestions of three-dimensional structure in a two dimensional painting—even a non-representational painting. We borrow the terms depth and contour from the painter’s vocabulary to describe a similar sense of form which the reader gains as she reads.
By contour, we mean a perceived pattern of meaning within the hypertext an observed stnictum that a reader can describe and appropriate for her own use. Some contours may coincide with explicit paths in the hypertext, while others may appear to us only when we think of them, or when a colleague points out an overlooked structure of meaning. Texts like dictionaries and integrated circuit catalogs, are essentially flat they may be large and informative, but they convey little sense of structure. A few texts—business cards and military orders—offer only a single structure and a single contour. Most texts, however, are richer, and present varied contours as we read and reread them.
A contour is “a contingent order, a linearity perceived in tension against the possibility of other lines” [43]. While paths [571 may follow (and illuminate) contours, contours are not paths. A path is, in essence, a traceable record of a trajectory. If that trajectory is meaningful, we might describe the path as following a contour; on the other hand, we may easily imagine a trajectory which is convenient or functional but not intrinsically meaningful.
Depth describes the presence of multiple contours within a text. When a reader first glances at a hypertext, of course, she sees a set of independent nodes connected by links, just as when we look at an abstract painting we initially perceive daubs of color placed on canvas. The perception of structure arises as we rationalize our initial impression. Just as adjacent blue patches coalesce into an object, or adjacent figures coalesce into a group, interlined and interrelated nodes coalesce into a contour [1].
A hypertext will appear to have depth-to offer many contours—when it can be seen as the projection of a recurrent structure that is structurally simpler than a non-recurrent one. Rather than viewing recurrences as anomalous phenomena, the reader will try to cast them into consistent, large-scale patterns.
A simplified “model railroad” representation of hypertext contours can begin to illustrate the depth of recurrent structures. The reader of the hypertext shown in Figure 1, from her current perspective (█ in Figure 1), perceives three distinct contours—the contour she has chosen, and two contours she has (for the present) foregone. One contour lies before her the other two contours were once readily accessible, but can no longer be reached by following links. A choice has been made, and the reader’s attention is not limited to a specific sector of the text. In this way, navigational choices lead readers to model the text’s intentional structures.
Figure 1. The reader at █ perceives three contours.
In actual hypertext systems, of course, the reader could still find ways to reach the sections she has bypassed. She might be able to retrace her steps and follow a different trajectory, or to jump (as if by magic) to a node whose name she knows. Though choice is not irrevocable, it influences perception. Patterns of links suggest patterns of intention.
Now let our reader (or author) add links to the hypertext. We imagine the perspective of a reader who has followed the same trajectory as before, arriving at the same place in the hypertext.
Figure 2. An added link provides a shortcut.
In Figure 2, the reader will still perceive several distinct contours, for her decisions have made some parts of the texts easily accessible while others can be attained only by extraordinary means. In Figure 3, on the other hand, the added link threads the contours together into a knot. The reader perceives that she has not been forced (at this point) to choose among contours, and what formerly were distinct sections or contours have coalesced into a single aggregate cluster.
During the reading of a complex hypertext contours may emerge and recombine as we encounter new links and connections. Contours that once seemed to pose irrevocable choices may rejoin, while other links, that once seemed to be mere annotations, may gain significance in retrospect. The rhythm of these shifts between recurrent structures takes the form of what Joyce has called replacement within contours [31] and Jay Bolter describes as the principle of interactive oscillation [44]. “Even in ostensibly clear and instrumental text”, Moulthrop argues, “the language and hence the hypertextual situation, may shift into oscillation.”
Figure 3. An added link knots contours together.
In an abstract painting or polyphonic music, complex, textured shapes seem to oscillate between foreground and background [1]. Similarly, intersecting contours may give rise to oscillation and replacement in our mental model of the recurring structures of our hypertext. These notions of shifts, oscillation, and replacement call to mind Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of “transcoding or transduction [as] the manner in which one milieu serves as the basis for another ... is established atop another milieu, dissipates in it or is constituted by it.”[14] The rhythmic recurrence of hypertext contours enables the reader to form her own working model, one which in its shifts communicates the intention of the text.

6 Contingency and Contour

The hypertext reader not only chooses the order of what she reads, but by her choices chooses what it shall be [17]. Patterns of allusion and recurrence, familiarity and novelty shape themselves into a transient sense of coherence; for a moment, we may look up from the screen and say, “Yes! Now I see where this hypertext is going.” What we discover is as much where we are going as it is what paths the author has laid out.
The text rewritten by the act of choice becomes constructive hypertext [28]—hypertext that is open to change and addition and revision, hypertext in which the authorship of the reader is made explicit. Readers constantly make inscriptions in the text—not only by adding bookmarks and margin notes, but also by choosing one link and bypassing another, or by remembering an encounter with a familiar passage.
A constructive hypertext, like a collaborative design [38], is a foundation for what does not yet exist. Collaborative design and argumentation systems provide a framework that reifies the transient structures of design and dispute [11,53,55]. These collaborative structures are continually being replaced as readers perceive (and create) new connections and disjunctions. Coextensivity [31] refers to this kind of replacement of one writing by another. We recognize coextensivity in the degree of oscillation and replacement among recurring structures of a hypertext. Constructive hypertext environments often make these virtual contours explicit through virtual structures [27] like the Storyspace Path Builder [54] or the implicit links of Perseus [45].

7 Tension and texture

Linear reading is essentially passive; the author has established an argument which the reader follows. As we read a hypertext, however, we are constantly summoned to choose one path or another, to pursue one goal and avoid a different goal. On occasion, we may know exactly what we want to find, and bypass the hypertext entirely for a simple query mechanism; more frequently, we do not know exactly what we seek, and our goals shift as we learn.
Not all places in a hypertext afford equal degrees of choice. Some places are fraught with tension, offering many choices which will shape our entire reading; others are flat and simple, offering few or unimportant choices. Texture measures the capacity for meaning-shaping choice among elements of a hypertext—the ability of a reader to transform the text and structure. Where contours intersect and interact, texture is dense, where a single contour prevails, texture is smooth. The texture of a writing space is not merely a matter of counting links; a writing space with thirty footnotes, each leading to a bibliographic reference, is flatter than a writing space that offers a choice of only two or three links that lead to dramatically contrasting contours.
We can define a crude but computationally- tractable measure of the texture T(n) of node n from the following observations:
    Each node we can reach from n contributes to the texture of n.
    Nodes that are close to n contribute more texture than nodes that can only be reached from n by following many links.
If we define d(n,v) to be the minimum distance between nodes n and v in the underlying hypertext digraph, a possible definition of T(n) might be:
Nielsen [48, p. 169] alludes to a similar measure. Some simple examples of familiar substructures may clarify texture:
    The texture of each place in a long, linear sequence approaches 1=(1/2 + 1/4+ 1/8....)
    If A is a footnote connected to B, T(A)= 1/2+ T(B)/2
    The texture of the root of a complete binary tree is the tree’s depth.
The densest places in a hypertext are those where many contours intersect. For example, consider Bolter’s Writing Space [17], a monograph on “the computer, hypertext, and the history of writing” containing of 451 writing spaces and 888 links. The most textured places in the document are section headings that describe key topics and supply a hierarchical navigational framework:
15.4 Writing Spaces
14.51 III. Mind
13.23 II. Conceptual
13.09 I. Visual Space
12.99 VIII. Interactive Fiction
The least textured places are notes that illustrate or comment upon specific points in the text:
0.75 electronic writing turns
0.75 unbounded
1.00 I am sorry to hear that
It can be interesting to keep one eye on the “texture gauge” while reading a hypertext. Texture climbs as we approach a major navigational crossroads, and declines as we pursue more specialized material. User interfaces can give textural cues; for example, we may raise the pitch of a sound that signals the turning of a page as the texture grows more dense. Because highly textured regions are clearly critical to the coherence and coextensiveness of a hypertext, a software agent or a link apprentice (see [3]) might profitably be programmed to recognize and represent local structures which occur at highly textured spaces.

8 Static Structure and Dynamic Perception

The search for better methods of identifying and visualizing hypertext structures forms a central thread in hypertext research. While the computational intractability of graph layout algorithms continues to mandate reliance on hand-crafted diagrams [2], interest in layout heuristics [33,50], interactive manual layout [30, 46], and visualization [34] has not abated. Other investigators have sought to simplify the visualization problem by automatically discovering reduced or clustered graphs adapted to individual reader’s interests [13, 22, 24]. Since the placement of individual links and the organization of small neighborhoods can be powerfully expressive, it seems only natural to seek a hypertext’s meaning through study of its underlying graph structure.
Following Botafogo and Shneiderman [7a], we sought to identify clusters of meaning in hypertext by identifying strongly connected components, sections of the hypertext so interconnected that any node in the section can be reached from every other node. We first observe that secondary navigational modes (bookmarks, history menus, navigational undo, bmadcrumbs, search, and link-creation by readers) transform almost any hypertext into a single strongly connected component; we are thus forced to ignore them, even though Walker [56] has shown that these are common and important activities even for readers of unalterable technical documents.
Botafogo and Shneiderman found that they could obtain meaningful component clusters in Hypertext Hands-On! [52] by ignoring highly textured nodes. Applying the same approach to more densely interconnected hypertext fictions, such as Izme Pass [26] and Woe [32], we find it very difficult to obtain meaningful clusters. If the texture threshold is set too high, we find a only single large component in each hypertext, accompanied by many singleton components and very small clusters. This result was not expected, especially in Woe, since Woe’s “Mandala” node with 38 outgoing links is so central to navigation through the text’s 63 nodes. Decreasing the texture threshold sufficiently does eventually break up the single strongly-comected component, but also dissects the work into many isolated nodes rather than a few meaningfid chunks. Thus, if we delete the ten nodes with texture >5.0, we find one large cluster (39 nodes) and ten small clusters. If we delete the 24 nodes with texture >4.0, the large cluster has disappeared, but the 39 remaining nodes are broken up into 23 components, all small. While readers describing these hypertext consistently perceive them in terms of aggregates like scenes and episodes, these aggregates do not easily emerge from the graph structure.
Nor do these aggregates emerge from simple models of reader behavior. In an effort to formalize the notion of contour, we sought to model the reader’s trajectory through the hypertext as a Markov process. Starting at distinct points in the hypertext, and assuming that readers were equally likely to follow any link (and that they completely ignored secondary navigation), we expected that different probability distributions would emerge, reflecting differences in contour.
Figure 4. Transcripts of two sets of random walks in Afternoon, from two different nodes. The nodes of the hypertext are laid out from left to right, and the probability distribution of each successive generation is shown from back to front. Random walks begin at a single node (rear of graph) but rapidly spread through the hypertext until most nodes share a similarly small probability (front of graph).
Much to our surprise, however, the observed distributions become very broad within ten or twenty steps. Even in the large, episodic Victory Garden (993 nodes, 2804 links) we could not find structure in the 15th-generation Markov distributions; random walks on the hypertext graph starting from a bunker in Sandi Arabia and from a campus nightclub each yielded similar probability profiles in which hundreds of nodes achieved essentially equal likelihood. Similar results were obtained from Afternoon; starting from two very different places—places that readers usually consider completely different episodes—we found that the random walks spread rapidly and uniformly through the text. This contrasts starkly with our own reading experiences, where we often find ourselves striving, to extricate ourselves from an episode.
The distributions are not, of course, identical, and our failure to identify meaningful patterns in the data does not demonstrate that such patterns do not exist. Still, random link choice is a very poor model for hypertext navigation. The experience of reading these hypertext cannot be separatedfrom the construction of meaning and perception of emergent contour.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Nancy Kaplan, Martha Petry, Stuart Moulthrop, Eric Cohen, and Carolyn Guyer, and to four anonymous referees, for helpful comments on early versions of this paper.

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References to hypertexts are preceded by a bullet (•)
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[Source: Bernstein, M. , Joyce, M. , and Levine, D.  1992. Contours of Constructive Hypertexts. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Hypertext (ECHT’92), 161-170, at Milan, Italy. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA.  https://doi.org/10.1145/168466.168517 ]