Past and Present of Willy Loman and Saint EMC² at Hypertextopia

At Hypertextopia. I found an interesting, but incomplete and unsigned (update — according to some mouseover text, it’s by Brian Yearling) hypertext that maps out part of the plot of Death of a Salesman.  I was interested in the subject matter, but I’m not sure about what value this particular hypertext arrangement offers. If it were possible to re-arrange the items so that we can walk chronologically through Willy’s life, that might help make some points about Willy’s character, but at present this hypertext isn’t part of a larger argument that uses the information in its hypertext form, so I’m not sure what the value is. 

Saint EMC² is a more complete example, with text highlighted according to whether the link is an extension, opposition, or illustration of the linked text. That might be useful as a device to get students thinking about why they are linking.

Here’s a thoughtful overview of Hypertextopia, from if:book.

3 thoughts on “Past and Present of Willy Loman and Saint EMC² at Hypertextopia

  1. I haven’t fooled around much with Tinderbox yet, though Steve (Ersinghaus) has been using it to match poetry to a collegue’s daily paintings on Mediaplay. Hey, I even tried a 3-D software program before I broke down and got Storyspace. The neat thing about Hypertextopia is that it’s so user friendly and available to work and show online.
    See you at HT’08!

  2. Dennis, read the Manifesto–that’s Jeremy Ashkenas’explanation of the site. I’ve written one story into Hypertextopia and will be presenting at a workshop at the Hypertext 2008 conference in Pittsburgh this week on this and Storyspace and how it influences the writer.
    I think that Hypertextopia and something like Storyspace differ in their purpose and opportunity but I love both of them!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *