Sweeping change

J. Hillis Miller does point out that Derrida's Glas and the personal computer appeared at more or less the same time.

Both work self-consciously and deliberately to make obsolete the traditional codex linear book and to replace it with the new multilinear multimedia hypertext that is rapidly becoming the characteristic mode of expression both in culture and in the study of cultural forms. The `triumph of theory' in literary studies and their transformation by the digital revolution are aspects of the same sweeping change" (Literary Theory). This sweeping change has many components, to be sure, but one theme appears in both writings on hypertext (and the memex) and in contemporary critical theory -- the limitations of print culture, the culture of the book.

Bush and Barthes, Nelson and Derrida, like all theorists of these perhaps unexpectedly intertwined subjects, begin with the desire to enable us to escape the confinements of print. This common project requires that one first recognize the enormous power of the book, for only after we have made ourselves conscious of the ways it has formed and informed our lives can we seek to pry ourselves free from some of its limitations.

George P. Landow

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See that post with different algorithms in metabole

See the journal French Metablog with today different posts