Ebooks made of intertextuality or hypertextuality ?

Intertextuality, as defined by Michael Riffaterre, "depends on a system of limitations in our freedom of choice, of exclusions, since it is by renouncing incompatible associations within the text that we come to identify in the intertext their compatible counterparts.

"He further states that this intertextuality is the complete opposite of hypertextuality because the former builds a "structured network" of limits that will keep the reader on track (towards the "correct" interpretation), the latter is a "loose web of free association."

This comparison forces me to question Riffaterre's understanding of hypertext. The quote comes from a 1994 article, when hypertext was somewhat different from today's (1997) version, but certainly not an amorphous, unstructured mass of material arbitrarily selected. Two distinct types of information linking in hypertext refute Riffaterre's argument. First, embedded links are placed in a text by the author. They are very rarely random.

A second form, "searches", are dependent on the programming of the search engine (program). Currently, different search engines give different "hits" to the same inquiry, which indicates that someone has decided how the search will be limited because computers can not make such decisions without instructions.Riffaterre ultimately sees the intertext from the Aristotilean perspective of certifiable truth. He even goes so far as to imagine that the "Institutions of Interpretation" have not changed since Aristotle. Perhaps some in academia can maintain that illusion, but those who have grown up as "other" would argue the point. At any rate, he embraces an artificial standard when he states,Intertextuality is made manifest either by syllepsis or by a gap, or by an ungrammaticality. . .

Each of these is immediately perceptible to readers, who need no more, to respond to the text, than the senses nature gave them.

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

Mapping ideas with hypertext

People have different ways of communicating their experiences.

Some express themselves in pictures, others talk about how things sound to them, and others speak about how things feel.

A Mental Map in an hypertext is a powerful way of expressing the thought patterns, pictures and associations that already exist in the brain. "When new information is compatible with your knowledge structures it is accepted, when it does not mesh with your pre-conceived ideas or past experience it receives little consideration, is distorted or ignored".

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 Hypertextopia-PHONEREADER Library -- Jean-Philippe Pastor

Not only associative thinking with hypertext

While hypertext is often claimed to be a tool that especially aids associative thinking, intellectual work involves more than association.

So, questions arise about the usefulness of hypertext tools in the more disciplined aspects of scholarly and argumentative writing. Examining the phases of scholarly writing reveals that different hypertext tools can aid different phases of intellectual work in ways other than associative thinking. Spatial hypertext is relevant at all phases, while page-and-link hypertext is more appropriate to some phases than others.

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 Hypertextopia

-PHONEREADER Library -

- Jean-Philippe Pastor

Mind and connectionism

The major points of controversy in the philosophical literature on connectionism have to do with whether connectionists provide a viable and novel paradigm for understanding the mind.

One complaint is that connectionist models are only good at processing associations. But such tasks as language and reasoning cannot be accomplished by associative methods alone and so connectionists are unlikely to match the performance of classical models at explaining these higher-level cognitive abilities. However, it is a simple matter to prove that neural networks can do anything that symbolic processors can do, since nets can be constructed that mimic a computer's circuits. So the objection can not be that connectionist models do not account for higher cognition; it is rather that they can do so only if they implement the classicist's symbolic processing tools.

Implementational connectionism may succeed, but radical connectionists will never be able to account for the mind.

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

Crux of hypertextual aesthetics

We must reinforce our view by constantly referring words to pictures and pictures back to words.

Ebooks must contain illustrations of the subjects we describe, and of course readers are invited to go to the actual scenes themselves; but the theory holds good only for literal representations and requires the denial of subjective elements such as association and an independent faculty of imagination. The crux of aesthetics is the treatment of figurative representation; and here, as we will see, we hold that metaphors further enhance our perception of natural and spiritual powers.

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