Xinwen's Comment

Comment1 - Augmented Text and Flattened Information

There is a description about hypertext in the book that “Imagine that the surface of the screen becomes a deep space, and what appears at first to be a single page of a text or object extends through a multiplicity of embedded layers, each displaying a different facet of an argument or history of a works production. Reader-viewers tier down and tier out, sifting through and engaging with”. It vividly described that the emergence of hypertext grant the text a multi-dimensional structure. Layers exist in the text, which “allow for a work to be understood within its larger field of cultural production; placed into the constellation of other productions and publications or artifacts of material culture; or situated within the documented events of an era.” However, the way that contemporary media present information is becoming increasingly flattened, in order to make the information easier to understand and faster to digest. For example, the long sentences with sophisticated structure is no longer being used in website. On contrary, what is showed on the website would be sloganized short sentences. Information has been shortened, condensed. I have no intention to criticize these websites because it is designed based on user’s needs, but to point out this contradictory trend.

Comment 2 Remix Culture

As far as I’m concerned, there are two definitions about interdisciplinary: the first would be collecting people from different filed in to one group and the other would be that one person is equipped with multiple skills in different field. These two kinds of interdisciplinary are lack in the university, just as stated in the book that “The university, however, still places a primacy on the singular nature of originality of scholarship and on clear lines of demarcation for authorship. In fact, the institutional structures for generating, evaluating, and legitimizing knowledge have barely embraced repurposable and remixable intellectual culture”. There would be no way to breed remix culture if the university continuously keep its rigid structure. In addition, the writer has deep insights in terms of the reason of this structure – “These objections, we believe, are based on assumptions that have traditionally valued “the what” (a determinate and relatively static set of knowledge objects or canon of artifacts) over “the how” (a flexible—even nimble— mode of thinking that privileges design, experimentation, risk-taking, and creative problem-solving). “