The Fiend of Hypertext or The Visualization of Inert Knowledge:

Revenge of the Iconclasts

It is the de-valuation of the visual that leads to the easy dismissal of "iconic" or visually-enriched computer use, particularly hypertext.

In a 1990 article, Marcia Peoples Halio, the director of the University of Delaware’s writing program, argued that student’s wrote statistically and qualitatively poorer prose when using an iconic-based interface (a Macintosh) which encouraged the dismissal of strictly prose-based editing commands (as used in an IBM DOS interface). (Halio: p.16)This fear of a collapse between verbal and visual is not . . .that future writers will revert to pictograms, but rather that the traditional modes of textual composition that stress linearity, closure, and containment are being eroded from the inside out by the virtually-based compositional aids themselves." (Tolva, p.4)

Hypertext is extremely iconic even at its dullest - where the glowing, multi-colored words take on the identity of objects, of even being touchable (granted via mouse). This image-like quality of hypertext, even when it tries its hardest to emulate printed text, is key to our pervading sense of discomfort in a suddenly visually-textured environment. We are simply out of our element. In a sense, the text has come alive.