Hypertext fiction

Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature, characterized by the use of hypertext links which provides a new context for non-linearity in "literature" and reader interaction.

The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text to the next, and in this fashion arranges a story from a deeper pool of potential stories. Its spirit can also be seen in interactive fiction.

The term can also be used to describe traditionally-published books in which a non-linear and interactive narrative is achieved through internal references. Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire (1962) and Julio Cortázar's Rayuela (1963; translated as Hopscotch) are early examples (predating the word hypertext), while a common pop-culture example is the "Choose Your Own Adventure" format of young adult fiction.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts - Jean-Philippe Pastor

Textual domain for Ebooks

A significant feature of hypertext environments is their capacity for inclusion, their construction of a vast and necessarily unfinished collage of documents striving to represent the knowledge (and the agon) of a discipline.

As yet, no boundless writing space exists, so I have had to try to create my own simulacrum of a textual domain. I have tried to exploit hypertext's capaciousness by offering extended passages from some of authors I cite. The current state of copyright law, however, precludes posting works in their entirety (and frankly, scanning or typing that much stuff would have been too tedious and time-consuming anyway). I have, therefore, included less than 10% of any given work to comply with the "fair use" provisions of the law.

Sometimes, all you will want is a standard bibliographical reference -- just enough to enable you can to get the book or article and read it in its entirety, without my noisome interjections, distracting comments, and distorting editorial decisions. Simple references to page numbers will occur in the text and the full bibliographic information will occur on the list of works cited (a link should take you directly from an author's name to the bibliography). An extended passage from the cited work is available whenever a citation is associated with this symbol -- .

There are approximately 11658 nodes and 180.000 links in this hypertext essay.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts -
PHONEREADER Library - - Jean-Philippe Pastor

Index cards in ebooks

Nabokov used them.

Wittgenstein did, too.

But only Niklas Luhmann made the humble index card his magnum opus. The German sociologist, who died 10 years ago, was 28 when he started to organise his first box of cards, or Zettelkasten. Marshall McLuhan declared the medium the message; Luhmann said: "I only think with my index card system." That system began simply enough: rather than being organised by theme, every index card carried a label that started with a number. If an entry got the number 57/12, for example, and took up more space than one card would allow, the second card would be 57/13. But if an observation within that first card led to a separate branch of thought, the index card would get the number 57/12a - which could run on to 57/12b.

Luhmann used the index cards to map out and develop ideas, thoughts and theories. He wound up with labels as long as 21/3d26g53 - the number of a card discussing his academic rival, Jurgen Habermas.The Zettelkasten reflected the structure of society, which, Luhmann argued, consists not of individuals or their actions, but of communication. Nor is modern society hierarchical, but divided into multiple, totally independent subsystems. The Zettelkasten allowed him to think about society in non-linear and non-hierarchical ways."We see ourselves as systems" he wrote - and the "we" referred to himself and his Zettelkasten. For Luhmann, the index card system was not only a work tool, but his "communication partner", as inspiring as any living person could be. It might sound an odd claim, but think of the surprises and delights our good friend Google coughs up every day and you'll realise that Luhmann was, in some ways, ahead of us all.

His disciples recognised this when they compared the Zettelkasten with the hypertext structure of the world wide web. It works more like a network than a book: no single text is more important than another, and the entries refer to each other by links. Easy enough, one would think, to transfer the Zettelkasten to the virtual world. In 1988, an interviewer asked Luhmann if he ever thought about that. "For my 10 metres of densely noted index cards", Luhmann answered, "computers came too late."

definingmoment@ft.com Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts - PHONEREADER Library - - Jean-Philippe Pastor

Metabolean change in the course of writing

As davis S. Miall put it, alternative models of what it means to read a literary text are abundant in the theoretical literature. The little empirical work that has taken place, however, suggests that a central characteristic of reading a poem or a novel is a transformation process, in which what the reader knows or feels undergoes a change in the course of reading.

This contrasts with other types of reading, from newspaper articles to instruction manuals, which generally appear to be cumulative, consisting of a process of conceptual model building. The latter process can clearly be simulated more easily by computer: the typical hypertext system, which provides annotations and links to related documents, enables a reader to elaborate a view of a target domain in this way. Thus a literary text can be surrounded by various supporting contexts that will enhance a reader's knowledge and understanding of it, but this is not the same process as the encounter with the primary text !

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Jean-Philippe Pastor

No need to be the author as a function

Do we really need me...

If something or someone is to be important, he or it must have a function.

But what is the function of the author?

Does he read the story out to the reader?

Does he explain the ambiguous portions to the reader?

What exactly does the author do?

Basically nothing. He puts marks on paper and that's about it. He doesn't even explain what those marks mean. For example, if I wrote this in chinese, I'm sure that even it were to be about how to read chinese, the non-chinese literate would not understand. You understand? So the author, other than putting marks on paper, is really redundant.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Jean-Philippe Pastor

Fluid and organic content

Writing for the web, moreover, has its own unique rhetorical devices.

The use of hyperlinks, for example, effects the overall visual impression of a web document, the bits of coloured text adding credibility and suggesting further avenues of exploration, thus adding depth and authority to the document. The invitation for the reader to interact with the content creator or author is another rhetorical device unique to this medium; it suggests that content is fluid and organic, quite the opposite in fact, to content set in permanent type or print, and subtly suggests the potential for intimate interactive dialogue with the author.

And further rhetorical devices such as visual clues, icons, and typographic effects are utilised to aid in navigation, and allow the author some degree of control over where the user is likely to visit. (M.Milton)

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Jean-Philippe Pastor

What is rhetoric ?

• 
  The study and practice of effective communication.
  The study of the effects of texts on audiences.
  The art of persuasion.
  An insincere eloquence intended to win points and manipulate others.

Defined broadly in our own time as the art of effective communication, the "rhetoric" studied in ancient Greece and Rome (from roughly the fifth century B.C. to the early Middle Ages) was primarily intended to help citizens plead their claims in court. Though the early teachers of rhetoric, known as Sophists, were criticized by Plato and other philosophers, the study of rhetoric soon became the cornerstone of classical education.

Modern theories of oral and written communication remain heavily influenced by the basic rhetorical principles introduced in ancient Greece by Isocrates and Aristotle, and in Rome by Cicero and Quintilian. Here, we will briefly introduce these key figures and identify some of their central ideas.

"Rhetoric" in Ancient Greece"The English word 'rhetoric' is derived from Greek rhetorike, which apparently came into use in the circle of Socrates in the fifth century and first appears in Plato's dialogue Gorgias, probably written about 385 B.C. but set dramatically a generation earlier. Rhetorike in Greek specifically denotes the civic art of public speaking as it developed in deliberative assemblies, law courts, and other formal occasions under constitutional government in the Greek cities, especially the Athenian democracy. As such, it is a cultural subset of a more general concept of the power of words and their potential to affect a situation in which they are used or received."(George A. Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric, 1994).

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Jean-Philippe Pastor

Figures of speech

The various rhetorical uses of language (such as metaphor, idiom, and chiasmus) that depart from customary construction, order, or significance. Attempts to draw strict distinctions between figures and tropes have largely been abandoned.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Jean-Philippe Pastor

Link typology

The role of rhetoric in relation to link typologies is not grounded in the individual relations established between a single link (or even a multiheaded link) between two nodes, but is in fact determined much more substantially by the context provided by an autonomous segment developed across several nodes, and more specfically several links.

A distinction needs to be recognised between the quantity of nodes versus the quantity of links simply because a small number of nodes can produce a significant number of autonomous segments by virtue of a high incidence of linking.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Jean-Philippe Pastor

Asyndeton

A writing style that omits conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses (opposite of polysyndeton).

Etymology:From the Greek, "unconnected"

Examples:

"They dove, splashed, floated, splashed, swam, snorted."
(James T. Farrell, Young Lonigan)

"Why, they've got ten volumes on suicide alone. Suicide by race, by color, by occupation, by sex, by seasons of the year, by time of day. Suicide, how committed: by poisons, by firearms, by drowning, by leaps. Suicide by poison, subdivided by types of poison, such as corrosive, irritant, systemic, gaseous, narcotic, alkaloid, protein, and so forth. Suicide by leaps, subdivided by leaps from high places, under the wheels of trains, under the wheels of trucks, under the feet of horses, from steamboats. But Mr. Norton, of all the cases on record, there's not one single case of suicide by leap from the rear end of a moving train."
(Edward G. Robinson as insurance agent Barton Keyes in Double Indemnity)

"He was a bag of bones, a floppy doll, a broken stick, a maniac."
(Jack Kerouac, On the Road)

"I have found the warm caves in the woods,filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,closets, silks, innumerable goods"
(Anne Sexton, "Her Kind")

"In some ways, he was this town at its best--strong, hard-driving, working feverishly, pushing, building, driven by ambitions so big they seemed Texas-boastful."(Mike Royko, "A Tribute")
"Anyway, like I was saying, shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey's uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That--that's about it."
(Bubba in Forrest Gump)

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Jean-Philippe Pastor

Used for the whole

A synecdoche is a figure of comparison in which a word standing for part of something is used for the whole of that thing or vice versa; any part or portion or quality of a thing used to stand for the whole of the thing or vice versa -- genus to species or species to genus.

Examples

"Good evening. Elvis Presley died today. He was 42. Apparently, it was a heart attack. He was found in his home in Memphis not breathing. His road manager tried to revive him -- he failed. A hospital tried to revive him -- it failed. His doctor pronounced him dead at three o'clock this afternoon.

Note: In this case, the whole (hospital) stands in for one of its parts (the attending physician and health care workers).
Click for Audio

"Give us this day our daily bread."
-- Matthew 6:11
Note: In this case, the part (bread) stands in for the whole (food and perhaps other necessities of life)
Click for Audio

"And I began a little quiet campaign of persuasion with certain editors, seeking to show the unlimited possibilities for education and amusement. One would have thought that we would find willing ears on the part of the newspapers."
-- Lee De Forest
Note: Two instances of synecdoche. The first uses a part (willing ears) to stand for the whole (persons in charge of making the decisions). The second uses a part (newspapers) to stand for the whole (newspaper companies).

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Jean-Philippe Pastor

Apple Mac Tablet

Steve Jobs on iPod Touch cameras, ebook readers and the iPod Nano 5G

Steve Jobs: he's back!

We're happy to see Steve Jobs back in the black polo neck and on stage in San Francisco and it seems he's even up for interviews. The New York Times's David Pogue got a few minutes with him and it was quite illuminating. If, like us, you're reeling a little from the lack of a camera in the latest iPod Touch, Jobs has an explanation. For him, the iPod Touch has become a pocket gaming device and it needs to be affordable.

He said: “We don't need to add new stuff – we need to get the price down.” Don't be surprised if we get a camera in the iPod Touch eventually though. On the subject of the iPod Nano 5G and its new video recording smarts, Jobs blamed the lack of stills snapping skills on the sensor: “Sensors for doing video are fairly thin. The sensors for doing a still camera…and we'd really like to have autofocus…are just way to thick to fit inside the Nano.”

Pressed for his opinion on ebook readers, Jobs was rather dismissive of standalone devices pointing instead to the convenience of general-purpose devices. It was a broad statement but could point to Apple's potential plans for the mysterious and possibly non-existence Apple Mac Tablet.

Another interesting hint on the future of the Apple Mac Tablet came in Jobs discussion of what went on at Apple in his absence: “A lot of things that were started before I left…were continually worked on…and there are some things I'm focusing a lot of attention on right now.” ??Steve, you tease! He continued, noting that the new products needed “polish” and that he doesn't think Apple will “miss a beat”. If you were disappointed by yesterday's announcements, I have a feeling you won't be next time.

(via The New York Times)


Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Jean-Philippe Pastor

Google Giving Up ANYTHING for Book Deal to Get eBooks

Thousands of aspiring authors from around the world can now totally sympathize with Google—because the search giant is also struggling to get a book deal. Well, okay, so mostly they’re struggling to get regulatory approval of a book deal, and said book deal is more about licensing and ePub than actually breaking into the industry—but close enough, right?

Anyway, Google looks like they’re getting to the point where they’re willing to give up just about anything to get this book deal through the EU. The latest concession is to allow two non-US members onto a board to administer its digital books settlement. Bloomberg also reports that:

Books that are commercially available and under copyright in Europe won’t be considered out of print under a proposed settlement with U.S. publishers over the company’s book-scanning project, Google said in a letter to several publisher associations in Europe.

The deal is supposed to pertain to works that are out of print (but still in copyright) as well as public domain works. The European Commission “is seeking precise details on the exact scope of the settlement” and “how many European works or publications will potentially be affected.”

Coming up on eleven months after the agreement was first announced, Google is still facing widespread regulatory scrutiny, as well as some protests from author groups, Amazon (via the Open Book Alliance) and others.

However, Google continues to pursue the deal (even in the face of the DOJ in the US). I think this is more than just Google not wanting to back down from their deal—I think this is a sign of just how serious Google is about their pending eBook foray.

They already have deals with Sony and Interead, and either of those deals could also lead in to the hardware side of eBook readers. Now they need the content to back up those deals and really make a push to take on Amazon.

If they get the necessary permissions for the nearly 500,000 books they’re proposing, Google could stand to take on Amazon—but Amazon would still have an advantage in current bestsellers.

What do you think? Can old books from Google match up to Amazon? Just how much will Google concede to get the deal through?

Jordan McCollum

Adorno's conflictedness about Hegel

Hegel's ubiquity in Adorno and Adorno's conflictedness about him are evident even to beginners, but hitherto it needed hard-won expertise to discriminate Adorno's near-idolatry of Hegel from his often angry critique of him.

By contrast, History and Freedom compels Adorno to engage systematically with the major Hegelian themes: the [historicized] dialectic, universal and particular, identity and non-identity, objectivity and subjectivity, self-consciousness (both individual and collective), the World Spirit, the Absolute, conscience and law, race and nation. (Short version of the critique: Hegel too often ontologizes or absolutizes one term of a binary pair, thus reifying what he, of all people, should have kept fluid and "dialectical"; worse, Hegel's lapse into this error is always in favor of the "universal" and against the "particular," for the master and against the slave.)

When Adorno mentions (without quoting) some "famous" remark from Hegel (or whomever), Rolf Tiedemann's expert notes quote generously from the relevant sources, with invariably helpful comment--and, often, instructive pointers to dissonances with Adorno's other writings. (Adorno here also gives his most straightforward evaluation of Kant.)

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Jean-Philippe Pastor

Adorno's view of language

As I read him, Adorno's view of language is close to Nietzsche's in "Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense":

language as not a re-presentation of some precedent standard-setting reality, but rather a tool, or even a weapon, a survival adaptation, like the claws and fangs of the tiger.

(Adorno would of course find Nietzsche's imagery disagreeably fierce; likewise he might think the figuration of "weapon" and "tool" too suggestive of instrumentality.)

Like Hegel, like Lacan, Adorno finds in the slippage or "nonidentity" between reality and language--what "The Essay as Form" calls "the non-identity of presentation and subject matter" in the first epigraph above--the space where desire and will, and critique, and art, make their case and their campaign against "what is." Such motifs in Adorno as "dialectic," "concept," and "negation" are functions of that performative agon language incites between conflicting human interests and indeed between human interests and material circumstance itself. When Adorno writes that "dialectics means intransigence towards all reification" (Prisms 31), it is clear that "dialectics" operates in language and in thought--or I'd better say, in language-and-thought, because I can't see any sense in which Adorno separates the two: indeed, their correlation is not only everywhere assumed in the Adorno force-field, but virtually named in the Hegelian category of "the concept." When Adorno alludes to "the kinetic force of [the] concept" (Philosophy of Modern Music 26), he is evoking the power of "the concept" to unfreeze, unfix, set back into kinesis, the congealed and hardened petrifications of ideology-- to enact, in other words, what Hegel memorably calls "the power of the negative."

"Negation" is the alternative to, indeed the critique of, /adequatio/: not the mind's deplorable failure to see things as they really are, but on the contrary, the mind's "dialectical" dissonance ("non-identity") with what is, in which is coiled the critical potential of affect and critique.

To this extent, "the power of the negative" is convertible with the power of "dialectic" itself--and this is a kind of power activated in semiosis: in language and in thinking: in /making/ meaning, not in more or less accurately (or "adequately") /discovering/ (and then "representing") it. Like Hegel, Adorno puts "negation" in the place where "representation" used to be--and if that way of putting it risks exaggeration, I'll hope to find my license in Adorno's maxim that in matters like these "only exaggeration is true."

Steven Helmling

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-Enter Jean-Philippe Pastor


Bookmark this on Delicious