Minerva's Owl Flies Again: The Gathering Dusk of Print Culture / The Burgeoning Dawn of Hypertext Culture By Bryan Gooden

'MINERVA'S OWL begins its flight only in the gathering dusk…' Hegel wrote in reference to the crystallization of culture achieved in major classical writings in the period that saw the decline and fall of Grecian civilization. The richness of that culture, its uniqueness, and its influence on the history of the West suggest that the flight began not only for the dusk of Grecian civilization but also for the civilization of the West (Innis 3)

Just as the shift from manuscript to print culture gradually introduced changes that radically altered the world so too will the shift from print to the culture of computer hypertext radically alter our world as we now know it. In fact, the process of radical alteration has already begun. Although, as in the previous shift, these changes have been gradual, there is however, one very important difference between the past shift and the presently occurring shift and that is the high speed and widespread nature of the changes we are undergoing during this transition. Never before has the world undergone such a rapid and far reaching transformation. Never before has the challenge of assimilating such radical changes been so daunting. And, being in the midst of the turmoil, excitement and fear it is difficult to step outside of oneself and one's usual perceptions, thoughts and feelings in order to see what is actually happening.

To assist in this 'stepping outside of ones' self process' I am borrowing from Harold A. Innis' ideas from The Bias of Communication where Innis takes an historical, political and economic perspective with respect to communications, the character of knowledge and the implications of technological change for cultural and societal evolution (Innis 3-4). In taking this stance, Innis himself steps away from the usual focus upon the content of such societal and cultural developments and instead focuses on the mediums through which these developments take place allowing followers of his works to extrapolate from his findings and bring them to bear on similar such developments. It is with this in mind that I examine the present shift from the culture of print technology to the culture of hypertext and computer technologies.

Just as in the previous transition between communication mediums, when, as Landow in Hypertext: The Convergence of Critical Theory and Technology quotes Kernan's description in Printing Technology, "During the shift from manuscript to print culture 'an older system of polite or courtly letters—primarily oral, aristocratic, authoritarian, court-centered –was swept away' …"(33) so too, during the present transition from print to hypertext culture, will an older system of print on paper, bound and covered in the form of a book, along with other print mediums such as newspapers and magazines; be swept away into relative obscurity in private collections, libraries, archives and other print 'museums'. Imagine a book, if you will, being a dusty, anachronistic novelty displayed in a museum where a child beholding it asks his mother in all innocence "what is that mommy?", as he points at the rectangular, dusty, musty smelling object. "That is a book dear", she whispered matter-of-factly. "But what is it for, mommy?" "People use to read them when I was young, before we had "Multi-medes". With an incredulous look on his face he replied "you mean there hasn't always been multi-medes? No way mom!" She shook her head and smiled and made him an offer as they left the Museum of Print, "maybe Grandpa has a book that he'll read to you." He jumped up and down hardly able to contain himself and exclaimed "no way mom, that would be too cool! Maybe I could teach Grandpa how to use my multi-mede.!"

Although the previous paragraph is simply a story to illustrate my point of the sweeping changes that are taking place, this 'story' is not far from present reality. The use of hypertext, or hypermedia as it might be more accurately described, is rapidly replacing more traditional modes of written communication and in fact written communications based on print and paper are becoming obsolete. This is not to say that print communication is not still being utilized, rather it is to say that it is being used increasingly less as hypertext technologies such as word-processing, e-mail and multimedia begin to dominate the workings of government, the economy and everyday personal life. We are escaping from the bounds of print media and in so doing we are given an historical perspective on print media, by hypertext, as Landow explains, "…the evidence of hypertext, in other words, historicizes many of our most commonplace assumptions, thereby forcing them to descend from the ethereality of abstraction and appear as corollary to a particular technology rooted in specific times and places…this technology – that of the printed book and its close relations, which include the typed or printed page – engenders certain notions of authorial property, authorial uniqueness, and a physically isolated text that hypertext makes untenable."(33).

The implications for reading and writing online, of this descension from 'ethereality of abstraction and the subsequent untenability of notions of authorial property, authorial uniqueness and a physically isolated text', are profound indeed. The notion of authorial property, for example, is indeed untenable with electronic linking capability and Landow makes this explicit when he writes "Electronic linking shifts the boundaries between one text and another as well as between the author and the reader and between the teacher and the student. It also has radical effects upon our experience of author, text, and work, redefining each."(33) Thus, when we read and write online we must be conscious of this shifting of boundaries and our changing experience of and definition of author, text and work. Once again, the medium becomes the message in that our consciousness is profoundly changed, forcibly evolved if you will, and in turn our culture will evolve of necessity as we behaviorally manifest these changes in consciousness in all of our human institutions. And as we manifest these changes in consciousness in the gathering dusk of the culture of print " Minerva's owl begins its flight" (Innis 5) once again…

Works Cited

Innis, Harold A. The Bias of Communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1951.

Landow, George P. Hypertext: The Convergence of Critical Theory and Technology. http://www.calliope.jhu.edu/press/books/landow/predict.html (22 Feb. 1997)

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