I'm a Tangenteer

When I get rolling -- speaking or writing -- when my thoughts are flowing and my ideas clicking, I go on a lot of tangents. My pal Gita and I dubbed ourselves "tangenteers" in high school. I made sense of things and marshaled arguments by seeing relationships among separate things, and I represented my ideas through associations, tangents.

For my Advanced Comp class, I'm reading Steven Johnson's first book Interface Culture along with my students, and blogging in response to my own blog prompts. Johnson writes about the hyperlink as a revolution in reading, but I see it as a revolution in writing. Let me explain.

Since the Enlightenment, linear argument has been the gold standard of academic and intellectual expression. Associative argument has been characterized as less rigorous and even more primitive in intelligence. Associative argument relies on links, in the world of print, we might think of the informative footnote as an associative link, as something that you want to convey to your reader but that breaks up the linear flow of the argument. Hypertext frees us from that; we can construct our arguments "in a more three-dimensional format--as an array of possible combinations rather than a unified piece" (Johnson 127).

To some, this may sound disorganized and emblematic of lack of thought. I dissent from that view. Writing arguments using links allows me to present multiple dimensions of a point I want to make. I can have the first level text read like a traditional linear argument, with links peppering my text, links that readers can choose to read over or click on. If a reader wants to simply to plow through the linear argument, she can. If, however, she hits an idea in the linear argument that is not clear to her or that she wants to read more about, she can click on the word (if I, the writer, have made it a link). She may then get taken to a two or three page extended definition and history of the idea or concept. Within that two or three page definition, I will have placed six or seven other links to some of my related ideas and to documents written by others who have commented upon the topic. It is like a common place book of old, organized three-dimensionally through links. For a more concrete example of a hypertext argument, you can read a book review that I wrote for the online journal Kairos