1) Making your way through this hypertext requires your concentration
on the instructions in the booklet that accompanies the disc. If you
keep the booklet with you when you are working, you should be able
to navigate the site well. The plethora of buttons on the windows
initially looks confusing (well, it was to me!). Use the guide to
identify each. The most useful to me in navigating are the history,
storyspace map and outline buttons.
2) This is a new experience: expect it to be
confusing. Don't be discouraged if you find your self lost or overwhelmed
by windows or buttons. Just open up the storyspace map again to re-orient
yourself. Remember, too, that reading hypertext is not a linear experience:
you, as reader, are expected to create, in a sense, the story from
your reading.
3) The Story
If you read the articles before you start exploring you should be
clear on the concept of the book, and the story of which it is reworking,
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. A number of 'I's inhabit this book at
different times: the I of the writer of the hypertext, the I of the
maker of the female Frankenstein, the I of the monster itself writing
and speaking. In addition, each of the body parts from which the monster
is made narrates its own story. You need to work out all the time
you are reading exactly who is speaking. The vagueness about speaker
that characterized the Don DeLillo essays will leave you in serious
trouble.
4) Navigation
There are two primary ways to navigate the text: by picture maps and
by text spaces. You can move between the two at will, but for those
who like to know where they are going and what will happen when they
are en route her are some basic directions.
Bring the storyspace map version of the text to the
front. You will see a number of titled boxes. hercut through
hercut4 and phrenology are picture maps: you click on
different parts of the picture to bring up separate sections of the
story. Use the history button (which produces a list of all the text
spaces you have visited) to go back to the picture to explore additional
links. Or follow the links from the text spaces you open. Use the
history button, too, if you want to revisit a text box.
journal, body of text, story, crazy
quilt, and graveyard are primarily sequences of text boxes.
Impatient, linear readers like me should open the main text space
and click on the outline button. Check both the show text box and
the automatically show text window boxes at the top of the window
and a miniscule text sequence appears on the screen. The print is
just legible, but if you double-click on each section, the full-sized
text box will open in front of the outline, easing eye strain a lot.
5) Why am I asking you to read this book?
First, you will find more and more of your research materials both
for school and for work on the web. Most major companies operate their
own webs, also. Teachers work more and more from the web.
Everyone (that includes me) needs practice in navigating
webs and, at the same time, reading, comprehending, analyzing and
drawing hypotheses and conclusions from the scattered materials we
encounter. We are all good, I think, at collecting information from
web sites. Indeed, the amount of information is sometimes overwhelming
and we find it difficult to do more than stitch it together into some
kind of hybrid patchwork quilt of our own.
The challenge facing all of us today is the challenge
of learning to create useable knowledge from that information glut.
Reading this 'book' is a valuable way of practicing all those intellectual
skills outlined above in the screen-based environment where more and
more of us will earn our living (and maybe spend our leisure, write
our books and poetry, gain our education, communicate with friends
and family, etc. etc.).
Explore…….Learn…….Ask Me Questions
as Soon as You are Lost!