Reading Notes 3 - Serious for a Moment

If I could be serious for a moment, I present to you this week's edition of Reading Notes.

I talked about my reading notes in class last Tuesday and that went over like flatulence at Easter services. Hopefully this week I won't be so controversial. This week I would like to talk about Lexia to Perplexia. All I can say is I'm in stunned silence.

I have never seen such random coherent incoherence in my life. I THINK I'm getting my head around it, but I really don't know with absolute certainty what is going on. I certainly hope that it's just not me. In the first section, there is wordplay with HTML code and words, kind of a cyber mash-up of actual text and of cyber text. This got me to thinking about how hypertext and regular words are similar but so different. HTML code is words, but they are words that create visuals. I think of it as onomatopoeia for the eyes. I come back to our website creation assignment as well and see this notion. Dreamweaver and the HTML I code creates a picture for me to enjoy after coding or writing.

Then you get to the whole section with the eyes, and that just is insane. It reminds me of "A Clockwork Orange" for some reason. I think about how the guy's eyes are kept open while he is forced to watch violence as to make him aware of the violence he causes. The whole rest of the thing continues on like that too. It's so weird.

I have a question. Is this thing insane for a reason? I just don't GET it. Sure, it makes me think of the connections of HTML to regular writing, but is there more? Is there a notion of "fast rhetoric" in there? Is the whole program a metaphor about how the internet is a place where true writing is lost?

Honestly, I think I'll stick with Wikipedia.