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.

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  • 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!

  • Great, I'll be at Hypertext 08, too. Looking forward to seeing you there. Just curious... have you compared Hypertopia with Tinderbox?

  • 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!

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