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The first person I knew who had an online journal was Raine. She started it while we were going out. I was very aware of this for the simple reason that it took up time. Lots of it. This was before the days of diaryland and livejournal; Raine wrote all the html herself. To get readers, she had to list herself on all the search engines, had to join open web rings. We spent hours upon hours in the library and in the computer lab as she fiddled with the coding. Was blue a better background? Was purple? Was the font legible?
The reason Raine started this journal was simple: hypertext. The Web is different from pen and paper because it's, well, a web. With a book, or a poem, or an essay, you read start to finish. Maybe you're interested in one special sentence; maybe you can't remember who a character is. You'll have to search through the rest of the text, and it might not be there for you to find. Online, you can just click a link. Who is this "Valancy" Romie talks about so much? Oh. In its ideal form, hypertext is the best choose your own adventure ever, and if I was doing it right, you'd better believe that "choose your own adventure" would link to a page that linked to Johnny's "Choose Your Own Adventure" about visitng Val and I in Dallas, along with a description of who Johnny is, a link to his journal, a link to an essay about the onilne journal phenomenon, an essay about the "choose your own adventure" phenomenon, a link to a retailer of the "choose your own adventure" books, AND a discussion of their impact on videogames.
You can see what I mean when I say that Raine's journal ate up a lot of her time. That said, it was an incredibly noble pursuit - really an attempt to change the way the world viewed information. Very postmodern. You, the reader, empowered to explore the sections that interested you and skip the ones that didn't; you, given the choice to read things linearly or by subject, to skip around and explore the characters you like (or read counterarguments presented by them). You, given the opportunity to know exactly what commercial inspired the "I want a kitten" entry, and to watch it if you're interested. Only if you're interested.
This was true for maybe five entries. After that, Raine got frustrated that nobody was clicking the links. I said something to the effect of "give them time; they're not used to being active readers," (only I was much less succinct than that). She said she didn't see a point in throwing her time away on something nobody appreciated. The grand experiment turned into just another journal, pages full of unlinked, chronologically-ordered pages, even though "hypertext" was right there in the title.
I think we fought about this. I can't really remember. In any case, I gave up without much fuss; not only was it her journal, but we got to spend more time together. Besides, she'd never carried the idea far enough. Among other things, she'd been too afraid that "stalkers" would find her if she linked to real life things like class schedules and photographs. Or, as I maintained, she'd been too afraid that someone she knew would find her journal and work out that she was dating me and therefore was not straight.
I know we fought about that.
In any case, the beautiful dream of a hypertext diary galloped off into the distance, and while I often thought of it wistfully, I knew it was a horse that would never be tamed.
Then I read House of Leaves and the top of my head blew off.
This was exactly what I'd been talking about for years, exactly what I'd been waiting for. A book you had to work on, flipping back and forth between indexes, studying collages, weighting what was true, who was reliable, spinning the pages to read upside-down footnotes. This was hypertext, and yet. . .
. . . offline.
So here we had a new level of absurdity. Offline, I had a book pretending to be a website. Online, I had millions of websites that tried to be books or, at best, leaflets. Yes, the websites let me skip straight to information, but so do title pages. So do indexes.
I thought about starting my own hypertext diary, doing it right. I drew up flow charts with lines flying everywhere, notebook pages black with links between keywords. Val started to worry. I started to worry. I started to go crazy - Howard Hughes kind of crazy - shutting myself in simply because I forgot where I was. I got lost in the page, writing smaller and smaller to fit the connections.
And this was without the actual coding, or indeed any of the text.
Val wisely staged an intervention.
Sometimes, I would slip up and go back to it, but only when I was really stoned and therefore felt I had sufficient distance from reality.
Now I find the idea is gripping me again, but not for my journal. For Neverland, for the Pan and his kingdom of drugs and slang, for the text dense enough that I have considered every word and why they use it.
Val?
The reason Raine started this journal was simple: hypertext. The Web is different from pen and paper because it's, well, a web. With a book, or a poem, or an essay, you read start to finish. Maybe you're interested in one special sentence; maybe you can't remember who a character is. You'll have to search through the rest of the text, and it might not be there for you to find. Online, you can just click a link. Who is this "Valancy" Romie talks about so much? Oh. In its ideal form, hypertext is the best choose your own adventure ever, and if I was doing it right, you'd better believe that "choose your own adventure" would link to a page that linked to Johnny's "Choose Your Own Adventure" about visitng Val and I in Dallas, along with a description of who Johnny is, a link to his journal, a link to an essay about the onilne journal phenomenon, an essay about the "choose your own adventure" phenomenon, a link to a retailer of the "choose your own adventure" books, AND a discussion of their impact on videogames.
You can see what I mean when I say that Raine's journal ate up a lot of her time. That said, it was an incredibly noble pursuit - really an attempt to change the way the world viewed information. Very postmodern. You, the reader, empowered to explore the sections that interested you and skip the ones that didn't; you, given the choice to read things linearly or by subject, to skip around and explore the characters you like (or read counterarguments presented by them). You, given the opportunity to know exactly what commercial inspired the "I want a kitten" entry, and to watch it if you're interested. Only if you're interested.
This was true for maybe five entries. After that, Raine got frustrated that nobody was clicking the links. I said something to the effect of "give them time; they're not used to being active readers," (only I was much less succinct than that). She said she didn't see a point in throwing her time away on something nobody appreciated. The grand experiment turned into just another journal, pages full of unlinked, chronologically-ordered pages, even though "hypertext" was right there in the title.
I think we fought about this. I can't really remember. In any case, I gave up without much fuss; not only was it her journal, but we got to spend more time together. Besides, she'd never carried the idea far enough. Among other things, she'd been too afraid that "stalkers" would find her if she linked to real life things like class schedules and photographs. Or, as I maintained, she'd been too afraid that someone she knew would find her journal and work out that she was dating me and therefore was not straight.
I know we fought about that.
In any case, the beautiful dream of a hypertext diary galloped off into the distance, and while I often thought of it wistfully, I knew it was a horse that would never be tamed.
Then I read House of Leaves and the top of my head blew off.
This was exactly what I'd been talking about for years, exactly what I'd been waiting for. A book you had to work on, flipping back and forth between indexes, studying collages, weighting what was true, who was reliable, spinning the pages to read upside-down footnotes. This was hypertext, and yet. . .
. . . offline.
So here we had a new level of absurdity. Offline, I had a book pretending to be a website. Online, I had millions of websites that tried to be books or, at best, leaflets. Yes, the websites let me skip straight to information, but so do title pages. So do indexes.
I thought about starting my own hypertext diary, doing it right. I drew up flow charts with lines flying everywhere, notebook pages black with links between keywords. Val started to worry. I started to worry. I started to go crazy - Howard Hughes kind of crazy - shutting myself in simply because I forgot where I was. I got lost in the page, writing smaller and smaller to fit the connections.
And this was without the actual coding, or indeed any of the text.
Val wisely staged an intervention.
Sometimes, I would slip up and go back to it, but only when I was really stoned and therefore felt I had sufficient distance from reality.
Now I find the idea is gripping me again, but not for my journal. For Neverland, for the Pan and his kingdom of drugs and slang, for the text dense enough that I have considered every word and why they use it.
Val?
