Word: hypertexts
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What are some examples of computer standards? HTML (short for hypertext markup language), frequently tacked on to the end of web addresses, is one: It describes how web pages are supposed to be drawn up on the screen. Mp3 (short for MPEG-1 audio layer 3, where MPEG is short for Motion Picture Experts Group) is another, which explains how audio files can be compressed and decompressed, so that the makers of digital music players know how to program their devices...
...words in otherwise unremarkable statements and speeches. But the son lacks his father's diplomatic code book and probably wouldn't use one if he had it. Indeed, when asked to explain his current position, Bush has taken to referring reporters to the April 4 speech, like a hypertext link to a website on Middle Eastern affairs. As he recently said, "The role of the President, as far as I'm concerned, is to stand up and tell the truth...
...different; one's affiliations, politics, interactions are different. The possibilities are ones of reaction and reassemblage in addition to mythic creation. There is a facility of interconnection: the continual sediment of meaning cross-links landscape and gesture like a fine web, echoing the flightpaths between cities and the subterranean hypertext of subways...
...acquire. For much of the story, Abe wanders through Prague-23, a virtual "city" in cyberspace where visitors indulge in fantasy encounters and virtual sex, which can get fairly graphic. The reader wanders too, because most of Grammatron's 1,000-plus text screens contain several passages in hypertext. To reach the next screen, just double-click. But each of those hypertexts is a trapdoor that can plunge you down a different pathway of the story. Choose one and you drop into a corporate-strategy memo. Choose another and there's a XXX-rated sexual rant. The story you read...
...might think this would be a point in favor of hypertext links, those ubiquitous wormholes of the Web. Not so, says Card's team: its research shows the average user gets confused by blue underlined words, and that these links too often fail to communicate exactly where they're taking you. So what's the solution? Ask Card, and he will point to the screen shot of an enormous multisided shape his team jokingly refers to as the Death Star...