Hypertext as reification of post-structuralist theory

Code and literature have come together before — for the first time and most famously in hypertext.

Whereas literary programming embeds bits of writing in code, in an attempt to further the communicative potential of that code, hypertext embeds bits of code in writing so as to make that writing more navigable. Simply put, hypertext is writing that contains links to other pieces of writing. There is really nothing more, in principle, to it than that. Hypertext is one of those curious technologies that was widely theorized about in advance of being created and used. The theory of hypertext, as devised and disseminated at this institution (Brown University) and others like it, positioned hypertext as the reification of post-structuralist theory.
Many grand claims have been made for it, and many lines drawn in the sand. The tendency to idealize it into some sort of potential textual utopia is what leads to the (tongue-in-cheek) name of this website. Post-structuralist literary theory has a series of tropes which align around the idea of the demotion of the author as fountain-head of meaning ("Death of the Author"), the radical plurality of texts (multi-vocal, eclectic), and the decentered nature of some avant-garde literature. Hypertext, it was thought, would be the literal embodiment of these ideas. It would usher in a new era of 'wreaders' (from writer/reader) who would take up these shiny hypertextual scalpels and remake texts in their own image.

Instead of passively submitting to a linear (and therefore, the argument ran, hegemonic and authoritarian) stream of text, the audience was supposed to jump in and choose the textual strands that they favored, reading in an order chosen by themselves, entering and exiting the text at any moment...

Jeremy Ashkenas

Semiosis and production of meaning

Semiosis is any form of activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, including the production of meaning. Peirce was interested primarily in logic, while Saussure was interested primarily in linguistics, which examines the functions and structures of language.

But both of them recognised that there is more to significant representation than language in the narrow sense of speech and writing alone. So they developed the idea of semiosis to relate language to other sign systems both human and nonhuman. Today, there is disagreement as to the operating cause and effect. One school of thought argues that language is the semiotic prototype and its study illuminates principles that can be applied to other sign systems. The opposing school argues that there is a metasign system and that language is simply one of many codes for communicating meaning, citing the way in which human infants learn about their environment before they have acquired language.

Whichever may be right, a preliminary definition of semiosis is any action or influence for communicating meaning by establishing relationships between signs which are to be interpreted by an audience.

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See that post with different algorithms in metabole

See the journal French Metablog with today different posts