Informational overload prevents viewers from ever mastering a videotext’s meaning

Evidence

The most interesting questions posed by a videotext of this kind -and I hope it will be clear that the text works, whatever its value or its meaning: it can be seen again and again (at least partly on account of its informational overload, which the viewer will never be able to master) -remain questions of value and of interpretation, provided it is understood that it may be the absence of any possible response to those questions which is the historically interesting matter. But my attempt to tell or summarize this text makes it clear that even before we reach the interpretative question — “what does it mean?” or, to use its petit bourgeois version, “what is it supposed to represent?” — we have to confront the preliminary matters of form and reading. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 229

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s theme of informational overload as a defining feature of postmodern media and the difficulty of comprehension. — connects to: Standing visitors will not read long or all-caps interpretive text — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 408; Video’s perpetual present resists being organized into textual memory — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 226; Videotexts present a ceaseless random interaction of narrative signals contesting mental compartmentalization — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 234 (+6 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Standing visitors will not read long or all-caps interpretive text — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 408; Video’s perpetual present resists being organized into textual memory — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 226; Videotexts present a ceaseless random interaction of narrative signals contesting mental compartmentalization — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 234 (+6 more)