Manipulating texts

The ease of cutting, copying, and otherwise manipulating texts permits different forms of hypertextual composition, ones in which the researcher's notes and original data exist in experientially closer proximity to the text than ever before.

According to Michael Heim, as electronic textuality frees writing from the constraints of paper-print technology, "vast amounts of information, including further texts, will be accessible immediately below the electronic surface of a piece of writing. . . .

By connecting a small computer to a phone, a profession will be able to read `books' whose footnotes can be expanded into further `books' which in turn open out onto a vast sea of data bases systemizing all of human cognition". The manipulability of the scholarly text, which derives from the ability of computers to search databases with enormous speed, also permits full-text searches, printed and dynamic concordances, and other kinds of processing that allow scholars in the humanities to ask new kinds of questions.

Moreover, as one writes, "The text in progress becomes interconnected and linked with the entire world of information".

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