Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This book is a study of the computer as a new technology for reading and writing -- a technology that may replace the printing press as our principal medium of symbolic communication. One of the main subjects of Writing Space is hypertext, a technique that allows scientists, scholars, and creative writers to construct texts that interact with the needs and desires of the reader. Bolter explores both the theory and practice of hypertext, demonstrating that the computer as hypertext represents a new stage in the long history of writing, one that has far-reaching implications in the fields of human and artificial intelligence, cognitive science, philosophy, semiotics, and literary theory.

Through a masterful integration of introductory, historical, illustrative, and theoretical material as well as an accompanying diskette containing a sample of hypertextual writing, Bolter supports his claim that the computer will carry literacy into a new age -- the age of electronic text that will emerge from the "age of print that is now passing." His reflections on literacy in contemporary culture lead him to a compelling conclusion: ironically, cultural literacy is becoming almost synonymous with computer literacy.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• 1 Introduction (p. 1)
• The late age of print (p. 1)
• Rewriting the book (p. 3)
• The uses of electronic writing (p. 4)
• The new voice of the book (p. 7)
• Computing as writing (p. 9)
• Writing spaces (p. 10)
• Part I The Visual Writing Space
• 2 The Computer as a New Writing Space (p. 15)
• Writing places (p. 16)
• Electronic trees (p. 19)
• Hypertext (p. 21)
• Hypermedia (p. 25)
• The first hypertext (p. 27)
• Writers and readers of hypertext (p. 30)
• 3 Writing as Technology (p. 33)
• Writing as a state of mind (p. 35)
• Economies of writing (p. 37)
• Hard and soft structures (p. 40)
• Electronic structures (p. 41)
• 4 The Elements of Writing (p. 45)
• Picture writing (p. 46)
• Writing of the second order (p. 47)
• After phonetic writing (p. 49)
• Pictorial space (p. 52)
• Writing in the margins (p. 54)
• Writing on the wind (p. 57)
• Constructive writing (p. 59)
• 5 Seeing and Writing (p. 63)
• Mechanical letters (p. 64)
• Electronic letters (p. 65)
• The electronic page (p. 68)
• Pictures in the text (p. 71)
• Diagrammatic space (p. 74)
• Numbering space (p. 76)
• Graphic rhetoric (p. 78)
• Part II The Conceptual Writing Space
• 6 The Electronic Book (p. 85)
• The idea of the book (p. 85)
• Great books (p. 88)
• Encyclopedic order (p. 89)
• The electronic encyclopedia (p. 93)
• Electronic environments (p. 97)
• The electronic library (p. 99)
• From Perseus to Xanadu (p. 101)
• The book of nature (p. 104)
• 7 The New Dialogue (p. 107)
• The reading path (p. 107)
• Platonic dialogue (p. 110)
• From dialogue to essay (p. 111)
• The end of the line (p. 114)
• The new dialogue (p. 116)
• 8 Interactive Fiction (p. 121)
• "Afternoon" (p. 123)
• The geometry of interactive fiction (p. 127)
• The game of literature (p. 129)
• The tradition of experiment (p. 131)
• Sterne and the novel as conversation (p. 132)
• The hypertexts of James Joyce (p. 135)
• Borges and exhaustion in print (p. 137)
• The novel as program (p. 140)
• Multiple reading (p. 142)
• Multiple writing (p. 144)
• 9 Critical Theory and the New Writing Space (p. 147)
• Technology and criticism (p. 147)
• Technology and the literary canon (p. 150)
• The end of authority (p. 153)
• The reader's response (p. 156)
• Spatial writing (p. 159)
• Taking apart the text (p. 161)
• Deconstructing electronic text (p. 164)
• Looking at and looking through (p. 166)
• Part III The Mind as a Writing Space
• 10 Artificial Intelligence (p. 171)
• The goal of artificial intelligence (p. 172)
• Modeling the mind (p. 174)
• Turing's writing test (p. 175)
• Artificial writing (p. 176)
• Writing chess (p. 180)
• Electronic animism (p. 182)
• Texts and minds (p. 184)
• Autonomous writing (p. 187)
• Artificial intelligence as deferral (p. 188)
• Searching for the author (p. 190)
• The writing test revisited (p. 192)
• 11 Electronic Signs (p. 195)
• Signs and reference (p. 196)
• The sign in action (p. 199)
• A texture of signs (p. 201)
• Signs without limit (p. 203)
• A new republic of letters (p. 205)
• 12 Writing the Mind (p. 207)
• Writing as analysis (p. 208)
• Writing oneself (p. 210)
• Opening the gap (p. 212)
• Text and memory (p. 214)
• The textual mind (p. 217)
• The intentional gap (p. 219)
• 13 Writing Culture (p. 223)
• Perception and semiosis (p. 224)
• Antireading (p. 227)
• Virtual reality (p. 229)
• The network culture (p. 231)
• Cultural unity (p. 233)
• Cultural literacy (p. 236)
• The electronic hiding place (p. 238)
• 14 Conclusion (p. 239)
• The hypertext (p. 240)
• References (p. 241)
• Author Index (p. 249)
• Subject Index (p. 253)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

An insightful, informative, and well-written hymn of praise to the primacy of networks over hierarchies, of hypertexts over traditional printed texts, of symbol-processing artificial intelligence over neural network approaches to intelligence, of computer mediated writing over more linear and restrictive methods, of Derrida's notion of writing as deferral over the notion of writing as the representation of the immediacy of speech, of multiculturalism over cultural uniformity, and, by extension, of polytheism over monotheism and the many over the one. This book is au courant; it links together a wide range of ideas around the notion of the computer as an instrument of writing, as a producer of a web of signs and symbols interrelating and representing author, text, and reader. The book is filled with well-turned phrases presenting stimulation and provocative points of view on writing and culture from earliest times to, especially, the present electronic age. A Macintosh hypertext version of the book is offered. Recommended for undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, as well as well-informed general readers. -M. Henle, Oberlin College