Reading Reflection # 7 on Jay David Bolter’s “Alone and Together in the Electronic Bazaar”

The Great Railway Bazaar. Bolter opens this article by reflecting on and quoting from the book she is reading, Paul Theroux ‘quasi-fictional narrative,’ While this initially seems a slightly ‘bizarre’ entrance into an academic essays, her reference serves its purpose by centering her idea for a hypertext travel log. Bolter proposes she put a hypertext program on her computer, go off on a long journey by train, and make a hypertext log of her travel experience. Similar to Theroux’ accounts, only Bolten aims to go one step further, by asking other travelers along her journey to contribute to her journal with their own hypertext, allowing each of their unique travel experiences to contribute to the story.This proposal for a ‘hyper-travel’ journal centers her article, examining how ‘hypertext fits into our literate culture’ ( 8), and arguing that the hypertext platform in the digital age serves to bring our individual and communal stories together, without sacrificing the writers desire for isolation in their journey and writing process. She states that "Hypertext is not only the best compromise for our fragmented community; it is also itself a metaphor for community at the end of the twentieth century. What we have is not a single, organized, regulated community, but a collection of communal interests groups held together by lines of associations that cross and recross." ( 13-14)

Before I begin reading this piece, the tiled reminded me of Sheryl Turk’s book Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, and her ted talk Connected but Alone. The premise of Turks work is to look at how the social media we encounter on a daily basis appearing to connect us more to fellow humans may actually be promoting a false sense of intimacy and detracting us from sharing in authentic conversations with one another. Turke argues that the social media we encounter on a daily basis confront us with moments of temptation. Drawn by the illusion of companionship without the demands of intimacy, we confuse postings and online sharing with authentic communication. Ultimately, Turks work asks to place greater value in the face-to-face conversation.

Preceding Turks work, Bolter proposed her ‘hyper-travel’ context, but still warns reader at the end of her piece by returning to Theroux' narrative, stating that the “linear narrative puts everything in its place. The kind of intellectual rest and recuperation is perhaps one thing that hyper-text will not give us.” Bolter’s work seems overall hopeful for the digital age, demonstrating “how the hypertext implies a new sense of community,

a new tolerance for multiple and even conflicting narratives” ( 17). Unfortunately, I think that what we see on multimedia, which is of course a reflection of our humanity, is that most of us would rather use these devices for superficial competition than harboring the openness of others narratives, which Bolter saw possible.