After the Book?

Well, there's after the book, and then there's not after the book. (What's not ?) Like at the same time, simulcast. (??) Look, if you've got something, you've always not got something else. Right? Where does the not something go? (??????) Good question. How about if we were to say that it doesn't go at all? That it's more a matter of negative/positive, or figure/ground, like that sweet op effect which has the same image take turns with itself in your brain? (Whose brain?) Oh, don't deny it. They're everywhere, as in endings are beginnings, destruction is creation, the road to nowhere, and the ceiling stain over your bed that looks like Madonna. (Hypertext and books?) Oh. So you read in bed.


But seriously. Isn't After the Book a strange theme for talk about hypertext? After, as if we hadn't been doing this all along. As if we ourselves will see the day, as if we know we have to head south when the last ice age picks up again. What future? I don't want to be alive without books. Nor will I be.

I suppose by After the Book you mean all those social questions concerning authority. (Surely you don't mean what'll the technology be like.) But even all the authority things, didn't we agree on those about ten years or so ago? If I tell you that after the book will be that longed-for day when all readers will be thinking, creative humans who actually write what they read, and it all happened because of hypertext, aren't I preaching to the saved? And it's a damn small congregation we are too.

I've really been thinking about this, and where I usually end up is that it's pretty much a load of crap. How many of you out there in the pews believe this? Come on. Are we worried that being transitional means we aren't anything? That postmodern is just something taped onto Modern, like a p.s. or a post-it? I don't mind being transitional, in fact I love being transitional, figure no one ever avoids it anyway. I see being transitional as getting to have it both ways, my favorite. So what I'm saying is, couldn't we go for a little more simultaneity? Couldn't we try to mitigate the testosterone just a bit and not have quite so much progress? Loxodromia is the idea. Well, okay, the Greeks had this one too. It's the zig-zag principle.1 You go a little too far one way, then correct and go the other way, but a little too far, then correct and go back the other way, etc. You could say it's sort of like walking.

      You're walking.  And you don't always realize it,
      but you're always falling.
      With each step, you fall forward slightly.
      And then catch yourself from falling.
      Over and over, you're falling.
      And then catching yourself from falling.
      And this is how you can be walking and falling
      at the same time.2

All this creation-of stuff is as much about what isn't there as it is about what's there. So?

So what isn't there is like an alternative not taken, refused as it were. But is it? If it's an alternative, doesn't it exist somewhere? I can feel it coming on, a sethian, or jungian burst, or simply something copped from the local self-help shelf (a bookstore?). Consciousness isn't us. We use it to focus with. When a thing, event, person, idea is clearly in focus, it radiates authenticity, we know it's genuine, and its alternatives are theoretical. Perhaps it's a matter of frequency. If one could waft quickly enough among the alternatives, they each would be equally genuine and simultaneously experienced. Forget about the clock.

Remember the old Indian saying?

You must learn to look at the world twice. First you must bring your eyes together in front so you can see each droplet of rain on the grass, so you can see the smoke rising from an anthill in the sunshine. Nothing should escape your notice. But you must learn to look again, with your eyes at the very edge of what is visible. Now you must see dimly if you wish to see things that are dim visions, mist, and cloud-people . . . animals which hurry past you in the dark. You must learn to look at the world twice if you wish to see all that there is to see.3

What do we care about After the Book? There's no such thing. One of the biggest problems we hypertexans face is that so few understand it's not really new. Computers are pretty new. Here's a tool that let's us waft a bit more quickly among the alternatives.4 So maybe the question is about the technology of the future.

After the book, there's the computer screen, probably a little one. What else do you want to know?

1 from John Fowles describing how he writes.

2 from Laurie Anderson in United States Live.

3 quoted by Jamake Highwater in Dance.

4 I know. You can't really forget about the clock. That's what I mean.