Hypertext: the universe in expansion. Master thesis in Social Communication, UnB, 1999.
This thesis explores the social and cognitive transformations that are occurring through the progressive expansion of hypertext on the Internet. The hypertext-logic and informational base of the Internet – is the expression of a new text, which was preconceived by contemporary literary theory, particularly the French one. With regard to hypertext, many texts are connected, generating a bigger text whose meanings are defined by the reading path built by the reader among different pages. In the thesis this phenomenon is analyzed as part of a wider social change that is understood as a paradigmatic event that happens in the change from modernity to post-modernity, from a culture based on print to a culture structured through hypertexts. The thesis also study the changes in the roles ofcommunication and on the people that work with it, when faced with this new reality, and how these communications through the computer are transforming substantially the production and dissemination of information in the world.