When we use books to study books, or hard copy texts to analyze other hard copy texts, the scale of the tools seriously limits the possible results.
In studying the physical world, for example, it makes a great difference if the level of the analysis is experiential (direct) or mathematical (abstract). In a similar way, electronic tools in literary studies don't simply provide a new point of view on the materials, they lift one's general level of attention to a higher order. The difference between the codex and the electronic Oxford English Dictionary provides a simple but eloquent illustration of this. The electronic OED is a meta-book, i.e., it has consumed everything that the codex OED provides and reorganized it at a higher level. It is a research tool with greater powers of consciousness. As a result, the electronic OED can be read as a book or it can be used electronically.
In the latter case it will generate readerly views of its information that cannot be had in the codex OED without unacceptable expenditures of time and labor (from Jerome Mc Gann)
In studying the physical world, for example, it makes a great difference if the level of the analysis is experiential (direct) or mathematical (abstract). In a similar way, electronic tools in literary studies don't simply provide a new point of view on the materials, they lift one's general level of attention to a higher order. The difference between the codex and the electronic Oxford English Dictionary provides a simple but eloquent illustration of this. The electronic OED is a meta-book, i.e., it has consumed everything that the codex OED provides and reorganized it at a higher level. It is a research tool with greater powers of consciousness. As a result, the electronic OED can be read as a book or it can be used electronically.
In the latter case it will generate readerly views of its information that cannot be had in the codex OED without unacceptable expenditures of time and labor (from Jerome Mc Gann)
Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/
See that post with different algorithms in metabole
See the journal French Metablog with today different posts
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