What compells me to the writings of Michael Joyce, in addition to the pleasure of the reading, is the way that Joyce captures the recurrant movements that flow between the acts of reading and writing and the texts that we read or write. This recurrance surfaces in discussions of potentially mapping both the time of experience and the space of memory. This mapping, I think, is part of what Joyce has in mind when recommending hypertexts involve us in a constructive process. In Siren Shapes, Joyce tells us "More than exploratory hypertexts, constructive hypertexts require a capability to act: to create, change, and recover particular encounters within the developing body of knowledge."

If we looked at the Web holistically as a collaborative text, we might be able to say that it does change and that authors do map a creative space each time they add a link or file. At the same time, Joyce suggests that "[c]onstructive hypertexts require visual representations of the knowledge they develop." Can we say that the web maps it's own development? Is a map all we need to make the Web more constructive? Again, the question is meant for discussion.

Teaching __ Theory __ Interact __ MU* __ Web__ Opening Screen
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The University of Texas at Austin