Hypertext semiotics in the commercialized Internet

In its most elementary form, the history list consists of the names of visited nodes but its usability for navigation purposes depends on the amount of meta-information about the nodes themselves and attributes of the visit. This meta-information should be available in different views, searchable and sortable, cf. [64]. Bilinski and Bumann have developed a ”HistoryTool” to compensate the weaknesses of standard Web browsers in this concern. The name of this function, from a semiotic viewpoint is a false signifier, because it does not correspond to the requirements of the basic travel metaphor: ”History” carries a strong connotation of universality that counteracts the notion of a personal navigation history.88 The toolbars of hypertext engines and Web browsers (see section 4.6) emphasize this breach with the consistency of the travel/navigation metaphor, by representing the history function with icons such as pyramids (Hyperties) and sundials (Microsoft Internet Explorer). 89 While the pyramids of Egypt and Mexico could still be defended as popular travel destinations, the sundial shows quite clearly the semiotic inadequacy, an unnecessary metaphor mismatch: The /sundial/ refers to another semantic marker of history than the travel metaphor. In other words, the icon designers of Hyperties and the MS Internet Explorer obviously thought of ”history” as the science of past cultures, and tried to represent this concept with pyramids and sundials. An often cited and comparable case of semiotic inadequacy is the eject function on the desktop of the Apple/Macintosh, where ”one can take the icon of a floppy disk and place it in the garbage can! The result is the Eject function, semiotically inadequate, but which, through use, became part of the Macintosh language” [375], see section 3.6 on the semiotic approach to usability. In a media semiotic approach, the history tool can be compared to external memory systems, such as diaries. Diaries differ from history books in their quality of externalizing [...]

a line of words but a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash” [38, p. 146]. In conclusion of this section, which forms the core of my prolegomena of a theory of hypertext semiotics, I do not think to have produced a new ”hypertext model”. Yet, I was able to interlace the existing models with the findings of semiotic research, on all levels of the textual, aural, visual, tactile and olfactory channels.59 While this connection between hypermedia and the field of media semiotics is clearly visible in Nöth’s Semiotics of the Media [399], computers play no role whatsoever in Bignell’s Media Semiotics [63] published the same year! The long-term goal of Hypertext Semiotics (as I see it) is to enhance hypermedia as a multi-level semiotic system that incorporates spatio-temporal aspects, the power of the image and ”language as the ultimate upgrade” [98, p. 182]. [...]

In terms of the Dexter Reference Model, the storage layer models the basic node/link network structure that is the essence of hypertext and describes a ”database” that is composed of a hierarchy of data – containing ”components” interconnected by relational ”links”. cf. [209]. The other two layers in the Dexter model are the within-component layer and the run-time layer. The interface between the storage layer, in which the hypertext network is stored, and the within-component layer is called anchoring. It is a mechanism for addressing locations or items within the content of an individual component. Anchoring is a mechanism that provides this functionality while maintaining a separation between the storage and within-component layers. The within-component layer contains the (textual and graphical) content of the hypertext; the run-time layer of the model provides tools for the user to access, view, and manipulate the network structure. The hypertext authors and readers, however, perceive the hypertext structure as blocks of text and the electronic links that join them, cf. [129, p. 3], [37]. While the passage from one node to the other (or, navigation, see section 3.7) is based on the linear selection and combination of elements, hypertext structure itself is seen as modular non-sequential and variable. As the nodes need not have a fixed place in a spatial order to form this network of text (and other hypermedia), hypertext structure is commonly analyzed by means of graph theory. [...]