I started the project in order to learn how to do hypertext. Since leaving the office of president at Ursinus College in January 1995, I have concentrated on readings on postmodern criticism. The generous gifts of colleagues, in the form of certificates at a book store, accelerated this: I bought books on postmodernism and worked at reading them. When I decided to learn how to write hypertext, the topic of postmodernism was on my mind. So--why not write a hypertext on postmodern criticism?
I found that this decision combined form with content in a satisfying way. Hypertext is a quintessential manifestation of the postmodern. To explore the subject in hypertext is to illustrate postmodernism in action.
THE PROGRAMME, so-called, you must understand as something of a game. I disclaim any serious pretensions to scholarship in creating it. I have insisted on making myself a part of the subject matter under study. This surely will look self-indulgent. But in doing so, I try to point to the sorry fate of the proud old liberal humanist self in postmodern thinking. Please do not take me any more seriously than I do myself when you come across references to the maker of the project. Those references will always be in the first person plural. If that confuses "me" with the imaginary "we" who pursue THE PROGRAMME, be mindful that it does not really make any difference.
Poems by "Bodgers" purport to give creative expression to the postmodern. In the modernist days of my youth, this would have been a pseudonym tacked on to some poems I wrote. Things are different in the postmodern. You have to accept that the texts of Bodgers are all there is of Bodgers. "We" includes him too.
I wrote the links that constitute this hypertext over a period of many weeks; and I continue to write them. This gives an amorphous character to what you will find. From the standpoint of the kind of scholarship we all have learned, driven as it is by the printed research product, such an outcome looks deficient. Hypertext at its best, however, creates a new kind of reader. Mine is not the best; but a reader, by following links of his or her choosing rather than mine, may get a feeling, at least, of the function of hypertext and the new identity of the active reader. That may render minimally acceptable the peculiar character of the text. Stuart Moulthrop writes informatively about the new reading experience afforded by hypertext; a browse through his hypertext on hypertext helps one understand.
I emphasize that this hypertext grows as my reading goes on. The bibliography and the commentary are woefully incomplete. Please take them as the evidence of one person trying to surround a subject rather than as a definitive resource.
In this hypertext (as in most, I think), you see a tension between a logical structure and a free-flowing asymmetry. At bottom, of course, all discourse on a computer depends upon the simple binary logic of the machine: either there is 0 or there is 1. That inescapable structure gravitates upward. The hypertext writer feels compelled to create a logical backbone structure; out from that, links allow the reader to shape the reading experience as he or she will.
My "backbone structure" shows up in the choices you have on the contents page. I created these categories as empty sets at the outset. As I have read, I have filled them in and cross-linked to and from them. If I were starting over, I believe I would simplify this structure. But for now the categories stand.
To show the design of THE PROGRAMME from a somewhat different perspective, I have created an overview of the levels of information that you encounter when browsing through it.
I did much of the work on the hypertext on an ancient Leading Edge computer at home, hooked up to the Ursinus VAX by modem. This resource is too weak to accommodate software with graphics and advanced forms of hypertext pages. You might say much of the work has been done in low high tech. Well into the project, I acquired Netscape on the computer in my office, which has much greater power. That finally allowed me to see the outcome of my hypertext with the finished formatting and color. If you do not have such a piece of software, you will have to tolerate a plain and simple text, as I still do at home.
Charles Jamison and David Mill of the Myrin Library staff at Ursinus College have my thanks for leading me into hypertext. Without their friendly help, this project would not even have been thought of. Steve Kneizys, director of academic computing, has been equally helpful. Stevo's surgical procedures on the guts of my office computer have made it a part of the solution rather than part of the problem. All three colleagues are a pleasure to work with.
New and interesting issues of intellectual property rights arise from the advent of hypertext on-line. As a working position, I have tagged the entire directory of THE POSTMODERN PROGRAMME as copyrighted. I provide for a liberal non-profit use of the material. The property rights of other material to which THE PROGRAMME links on the World Wide Web remain whatever they were determined to be by their originators.
I welcome e-mail about the threads of thought in THE PROGRAMME. I hope everyone at least will send a note to say they have visited. To get in touch, use THE MAILBOX.
Enough of explanations, rationalizations, waivers, and disclaimers.
A small excursion through some links. This was used in a demonstration on 2 April 1996. It will give a newcomer a sense of the operation of THE PROGRAMME.