Interconnectedness

Hypertextuality

Hypertextuality is a postmodern theory of the inter-connectedness of all literary works and their interpretation.

The prefix 'hyper' is derived from the Greek 'above, beyond or outside'. Hence hypertext has come to describe a text which provides a network of links to other texts that are 'outside, beyond and above itself'.

According to Gerard Genette in Palimpsestes, a book about hypertextuality, "hypotext" refers to the source of the text, as well as to previous editions or versions of it. Hypertext is related to paratext, which includes information that accompanies the text itself (illustrations, preface or introduction).

See also

• Intertextuality
• Paratext

References

1. ^ Genette, Gérard (1997). Palimpsests: literature in the second degree. Translated by Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-7029-1. OCLC 36001432.http://books.google.com/books?id=KbYzNp94C9oC. Retrieved 6 April 2009.

see http://www.hypertext.belarus.pomorze.pl/

ekstremalna jazda quady warszawa w super cenie - stare monety ceny - monety kolekcjonerskie 2 zł - monety i banknoty -katalog monet ceny

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

Move paradigm in hypertextuality

This text is Apture enhanced (click or underline words you need ton inspect).

Some hypertext theorists take an extreme view of the notion that readers should be expected to move by example or paradigm. A group of theorists calling themselves only "The Critical Art Ensemble" argue,

the tyranny of paradigms may have some useful consequences (such as greater efficiency within the paradigm), but the repressive costs to the individual (excluding other modes of thinking and reducing the possibility of invention) are too high. Rather than being led by sequences of signs, one should instead drift through them, choosing the interpretation best suited to the social conditions of a given situation .

Again, paralogic hermeneutics is remarkably prepared to agree. Kent states that the piece of communication (icon, sentence, utterance) is forever separated from the consequence of its existence. Kent revisits Derrida on this subject:

Our inability to reduce every use of language to one hermeneutic strategy come about because of the iterability of the sign or sentence; as Derrida phrases it, 'the sign possesses the characteristic of being readable even if the moment of its production is irrevocably lost and even if I do not know what its alleged author-scriptor consciously intended to say at the moment he wrote it, i.e., abandoned it to its essential drift'.

In refusing to predict the inventive accommodation that allows for communication, proponents of paralogic hermeneutics do accommodate the nebulous nature of hypertextual movement. When I surf the web, I rarely end in a predictable spot. Therefore, I find myself paying closer attention to my path and the connections between seemingly disparate web texts. This attention to the connections often helps me to recognize patterns that would otherwise go unnoticed. More traditional texts, in attempting to control "drift", may try to keep readers moving along a certain track, but if an individual traces her own path toward understanding a concept, there are inevitably twists and turns that create a road to knowledge that no other mind would, or could re-create.

Predictable spot

When I surf the web, I rarely end in a predictable spot.

Therefore, I find myself paying closer attention to my path and the connections between seemingly disparate web texts. This attention to the connections often helps me to recognize patterns that would otherwise go unnoticed. More traditional texts, in attempting to control "drift", may try to keep readers moving along a certain track, but if an individual traces her own path toward understanding a concept, there are inevitably twists and turns that create a road to knowledge that no other mind would, or could re-create.

While the challenge of hypertextual drift may prove too much for some literary theories, paralogy and, in particular, paralogic hermeneutics seems well equipped to deal with the phenomenon. There are differences between the old way and the new, but i can show that a theory which informs paper-based technology helps to accurately describe the reality of matching author, text, and reader in the world of hypertext as well.

New writing technology approaches the origin of langage

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

My former hypertext phonereader/metabole - hypertext essay - was based upon 20 different topics.

This one hypertextopia/metabole focuses on three philosophers and three of their personal philosophical principles:

1. Walter Benjamin and his replacement of Plato's theory of forms and Ideas by a theory of linguistics and textual writing. Paradoxically, new writing technology approaches the origin of langage.
2. Martin Heidegger and his latest ontology of permanent mutation: at last, Being has to be metabolized.
3. Cornelius Castoriadis and his creating "social imaginary signification" that cannot be deduced from rational or real, empirical elements or specific forces.

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.

NOW enter the Hypertext _ Hypertextopia

MetaBlog english different posts

Rejoignez le Journal de l'Hypertexte en anglais (posts du jour différents de ceux ici présents) -
Connectez-vous sur hypertextual.net l'Hypertexte Principal de la Solution -

Diffusion du flux

Tous les eBooks accessibles sur Phonereader.GoogleBooks

Entrez dans la Bibliothèque pour readers mobiles de Phonereader.eu

Literary theory in the digital age

Hyper/Text/Theory
Essays on literature and literary theory in the digital age

George Landow was amongst the early few to spot the similarities between modern literary theory and the technological possibilities of hypertext programmes. This is the third of his publications which explore connexions between them. The general argument he makes is that the digitization of text coupled with the associative links of hypertext represents a development of revolutionary potential.

It makes new literary forms available, blurs distinctions between existing genres ['boundary erasure'] and makes possible anything from multimedia compilations started by authors but completed by their readers, to texts which are ‘unreproducible’ because of their size and their constant revision.

His introductory essay is an invigorating mixture of reports on hypertext projects and visionary ideas of the kind promoted by Jay Bolter and Nicholas Negroponte. Unfortunately, his fellow contributors fail to match his standard. The other essays deal with non-linearity as one of the essential features of hypertext, the politics of this branch of IT, and what promotes itself as new writing – ‘hypertext fiction’, a somewhat dubious notion over which there is still much debate.

They range enthusiastically over topics as diverse as Wittgenstein’s notebooks, films and narratology, and forms of classical rhetoric. But much of their exposition is clogged with silly jargon ['texton', 'scripton', 'screener'] which is depressingly rife amidst professionals in the field of cultural studies.

At their worst the essays deal in speculation rather than reporting
on practical experiences or successful projects. Mireille Rosello for instance at one point drops to the level of conceptual art when she spends two or three pages describing what an imaginary hypertext programme could be like. Since there are unsung technical writers out there in the field constructing hypertext programmes for real right now, this is a feeble and self-indulgent substitute. There are just too many questions raised, not enough empirical data or answers.

One further dispiriting feature is the tendency of the authors to draw
on the same material, and even worse to quote each other. It is one thing for them to [quite understandably] cite Ted Nelson as a hypertext visionary, but when yet another reference to Thomas Pynchon occurs in the fourth or fifth essay, one wonders if these aren’t the papers of some post-graduate club. This suspicion is reinforced by the tendency for them all to quote from the same fashionable cultural theorists – Deleuze, Guattari, Baudrillard, and Lyotard. The collection ends with a piece of post-Modernist tosh by Gregory L Ulmar which weaves a tissue of non-sequiturs around a contrived verbal connexion between Wittgenstein [again] and Carmen Miranda.

In Landow’s own survey of current programmes and projects [written, one supposes, circa 1993/94] it is interesting to note how often he describes the hypertext systems available by using the telling metaphor of a ‘web’ of connexions. The World Wide Web which was under development at that very time now makes available many of the linkages dreamed of from Vannevar Bush onwards. And most importantly, they are available not merely for some technological elite as in the past, but for whoever wishes to use them. This is a democratizing influence which will have a profound effect upon the construction, assembly, and cross-linking of information – and Landow knows it. One of the driving forces behind this collection of essays is to make these possibilities known. I imagine that a further post-WWW volume is on its way right now – but I hope he writes the book himself.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

George P. Landow, (ed) Hyper/Text/Theory, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, pp.379, ISBN 0801848385

Indexing system

Hypertext, made famous by the World Wide Web, is most simply a way of constructing documents that reference other documents. Within a hypertext document, a block of text can be tagged as a hypertext link pointing to another document. When viewed with a hypertext browser, the link can be activated to view the other document. Of course, if you're reading this document, you're already familiar with the concept.

Hypertext's original idea was to take advantage of electronic data processing to organize large quantities of information that would otherwise overwhelm a reader. Two hundred years ago, the printing press made possible a similar innovation - the encyclopedia. Hypertext's older cousin combined topical articles with an indexing system to afford the researcher one or perhaps two orders of magnitude increase in the volume of accessible information. Early experience with hypertext suggests that it may ultimately yield an additional order of magnitude increase, by making directly accessible information that would otherwise be relegated to a bibliography. Hypertext's limiting factor appears not to be the physical size of some books, but rather the ability of the reader to navigate increasingly complex search structures. Currently, additional increases in human information processing ability seem tied to developing more sophisticated automated search tools, though the present technology presents possibilities that remain far from fully explored.

Augmenting basic hypertext with graphics, more complex user input fields and dynamically generated documents adds considerable power and flexibility to this concept. Hypertext, though still useful for its original goal of organizing large quantities of information, becomes a simple, general purpose user interface that fits neatly into the increasingly popular client-server model. It does not seem difficult to image a day when restaurant orders, for example, will be taken using a hand-held hypertext terminal, relayed directly to the kitchen for preparation, and simultaneously logged to a database for later analysis by management.


Characteristics of good hypertext

The flexibility of hypertext gives free range to the author's creativity, but good hypertext appears to have some common characteristics:


Lots of documents. Much of the hypertext's power comes from its ability to make large quantities of information accessible. If all the text in your system can be printed on ten pages, it would be just as simple to read through it from beginning to end and forget all this hypertext silliness. On the other hand, if there are ten million pages of text in your system, then someone could follows a link on atomic energy and ultimately hope to find a description of the U-238 decay process.

Lots of links. If each document has just one link, then it is little more than normal, sequential text. A hypertext document should present the reader with several links, offering a choice about where to go next. Ideally, a document should present as many relevant links as the reader can easily comprehend and select among.

Range of detail. The great advantage of hypertext is that it permits readers to explore to a breadth and depth that is simply not feasible in print. To make this accessible, available hypertext documents should range from the broadest possible overview of a subject, down to its gritty details. Imagine the Encyclopedia Britannica, all thirty-odd volumes of it, searchable online and with each article possessing links to a half dozen reference documents with even more detailed subject coverage. This is the potential of hypertext.

Correct links. This may seem trivial, but it's amazing how many Web links point nowhere. In general, be careful linking to any hypertext document not under your direct control. Can you count on it to be there later?

Guidelines for a hypertext reference system

Hypertext seems best suited for reference material, so here are my suggested guidelines for creating hypertext reference systems, with the Internet Encyclopedia offered as an example:


Reference documents. Start by assembling a good set of core reference material. In the Encyclopedia's case, the RFCs that document standard Internet protocols form this core. Ideally, the reference core should consist of extremely detailed documents, offering the highest possible degree of completeness. A general reference work on physics might start with a large collection of scientific papers.

Topical articles. Augment the core reference material with articles at a broader level of detail. Systematic organization of these articles, perhaps using an outline as a framework, is essential to making them accessible to the reader. The articles should be focused, and short enough to be easily digestible in one piece.

Search engine. A good search engine is invaluable for any large collection of documents. The Internet Encyclopedia uses a search model based on searching outward from a particular page, in order to facilitate both topical and keyword searches.

Extras. These can include graphics, audio and video clips, problems and exercises, student courses, simulations, sample programs, ordering forms, database tables, and revision histories, to name a few.

As I read both Carr and Shirky over the past couple weeks—who both seek parallels between the rise of the internet and digital social media and the invention of the printing press in the 16th century—I couldn’t help thinking about medieval manuscripts.

Since the early 1990s, both medievalists and electronic media theorists have pointed to the hypertexted quality of medieval illuminated manuscripts in making complementary claims: medievalists to continuing cultural relevancy and electronic media theorists in continuity to literary tradition. The medieval books we admire so much today are distinguished by the remarkable visual images, in the body of a text and in the margins, that scholars have frequently compared to hypertexted images on internet “pages.”

The function of these images in illuminated manuscripts has no small bearing on the hypertext analogy. These “miniatures” (so named not because they were small—often they were not—but because they used red ink, or vermillion, the Latin word for which is minium) did not generally function as illustrations of something in the written text, but in reference to something beyond it. The patron of the volume might be shown receiving the completed book or supervising its writing. Or, a scene related to a saint might accompany a biblical text read on that saint’s day in the liturgical calendar without otherwise having anything to do with the scripture passage. Of particular delight to us today, much of the marginalia in illuminated books expressed the opinions and feelings of the illuminator about all manner of things—his demanding wife, the debauched monks in his neighborhood, or his own bacchanalian exploits.

Books of commentary, known as “glosses,” included conversations among different commentators across time that surrounded a central text, such as a Bible passage. The wisdom of the rabbis or Christian sages would be preserved through decades and centuries, with new commentators sometimes being added as successive copies were produced. Over time, the original contexts for these comments were forgotten and their relevance to the central text became obscure, so they became part of the interpretive project of reading a book. Often, the commentary became more significant than the central text itself.

see drescher

Metabolean Hypertextopia

Metabolean Hypertextopia


This website was first created in 2005, built to serve as a central location to link to the diverse online materials available on the Internet.

At that time, Internet mobile portals did not yet exist. What rhetoric pages on the Web did exist were heavily colored by the perspectives of their host institutions. This site hoped to publish what resources it could, and to link to all, serving as a central "map" to the rest. Even so, many people referred to it as the Metabolean Site; some people refer to it that way to this day, even though the site has physically moved to another place.

And today, of course, there are far more resources online than we could index adequately with a single online editor--even if s/he wrote HTML day and night. So this website is today based on a modern content management system, one that allows volunteers, reviewers and editors to collaborate to post new materials, and to link to the complex web of online resources located across the Internet that comprise the complex network of rhetoric resources online.

So we're developing an extensive collaboration here, within a modern web publishing system that will allow our volunteers to spend as much or as little time as they choose, and will allow us to offer any state-of-the-art web technologies (e.g. blogs, threaded discussion boards, database-driven content pages, streaming media, etc.) we believe useful to the site.

- See the journal French Metablog with today different posts - Jean-Philippe Pastor

Hyperlinking and Hypertexting

An Hyperlink is an element in an electronic document that links to another place in the same document or to an entirely different document.

Typically, you click on the hyperlink to follow the link. Hyperlinks are the most essential ingredient of all hypertext systems, including the World Wide Web.

An Hypertext is a special type of database system, invented by Ted Nelson in the 1960s, in which objects (text, pictures, music, programs, and so on) can be creatively linked to each other.

When you select an object, you can see all the other objects that are linked to it. You can move from one object to another even though they might have very different forms.

For example, while reading a document about Mozart, you might click on the phrase Violin Concerto in A Major, which could display the written score or perhaps even invoke a recording of the concerto. Clicking on the name Mozart might cause various illustrations of Mozart to appear on the screen. The icons that you select to view associated objects are called Hypertext links or buttons.

Hypertext systems are particularly useful for organizing and browsing through large databases that consist of disparate types of information. There are several Hypertext systems available for Apple Macintosh computers and PCs that enable you to develop your own databases. Such systems are often called authoring systems . HyperCard software from Apple Computer is the most famous.

From Webopedia

- See the journal French Metablog with today different posts - Jean-Philippe Pastor

Editing or writing ?

There is more to writing than putting words next to each other, and there is more to writing hypertext than throwing together a bunch of links. When writing text, I have certain goals; when I come across text I dislike, there are certain reasons why I do not like it. You're about to read an attempt to describe these reasons and goals; it is incomplete, subjective, and honest.

Writing hypertext copy
The two pitfalls of writing hypertext copy are links and emotions. Links are a new stylistic element that writers must learn to handle. The emotional problem is harder: we must snap out of the "host" or "provider" role, must get away from the excitement of guiding another person through the text, and get back to - just writing.

Editing and publishing
Editing doesn't necessarily happen after the first text has been written, but it deserves to be thought of as an independent discipline. Most of what people do on the World­Wide Web is really editing, not writing.

Maintenance
"This document is under construction." Of course it is. The World­Wide Web is changing; new browsers appear; the language HTML changes; people change jobs and homepages; and writers learn more about their subject.

Jutta Degener

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

Recursive functions and hypertextuality

To know whether a course in a hypertext will halt, it is necessary to know whether recursive functions are involved in the choosen algorithm, which is still an unsolved mathematics problem to me.

Recursive functions and loops are equivalent in expression; any expression involving loops can be written using recursion, and vice versa. Thus the termination of recursive expressions are also undecidable in general. Most recursive expressions found in common usage (ie. not pathological) can be shown to terminate through various means, usually depending on the definition of the expression itself.

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

Three classic hypertexts and a reader

As Markku Eskelinen put it , we could say that the three classic hypertexts, Michael Joyce’s Afternoon, Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden, and Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl all did what they could to make the reader more receptive to the marvels of their labyrinths:

by using hidden and conditional links to highlight and parallel the defences and self-denials of the protagonist in Afternoon, his general unwillingness to know; evoking and concretising the familiar literary tradition of forking paths of Borges, Coover and Pynchon in Victory Garden; and foregrounding Frankensteinian bodily metaphors to ease the postmodernist butchery work of connecting parts and wholes in Patchwork Girl.

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

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

Complex textual structure of the Real

Even the most conservatively narrative history is filled with complex textual structure, discursion, and linkage. T

This fact does not depend on postmodern analysis or literary theoretic argument, nor does is derive from a novel philosophical or methodological stance; the structures we have discussed all appear, for example, in Thucydides' opening chapters. We need not fear that hypertext will slash apart or cherished narrative simplicity, for this narrative simplicity never existed.

Letting go our irrational fears of electronic writing and leaving aside nostalgia for an imaginary literary past, we can explore afresh the opportunities hypertext offers. Linearity was never an option for historical writing; hypertextuality can make complex structure concrete, clear and responsive to both the author and reader.

It is a shame that too much of the popular perspective on hypertext does not yet recognize this, and that hypertext punditry so often caters to fear and nostalgia.

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

Where is the lexia in the hypertext ?

The author's current work in progress carries the concept of simultaneity still further in the idea of a nested simultaneity.

In some cases this work carries the simultaneity inside the sentence. Hypertext is carried into the fine structure of language. Where is "the lexia" now? Is there really a concept of lexia when we are inside the sentence?

A hypertext may be thought of as a kind of virtual diagram, with software for navigating the diagram. If the diagram is small enough it may be presented in a single graphical space, without the aid of software. The author's Diagram Poems are examples of such works. These present an explicitly relational syntax notation, still used in Intergrams and Diffractions through. The structural atoms in the Diagram Poems are small clusters of words; the relational (i.e. hypertext-on-paper) structure is the sentence structure. What shall we say is "the lexia" here? In the Diagram Poems, the diagram notation carries syntax itself. Executed on a larger scale, this concept leads to the use of hypertext to carry the very infrastructure of language. Such works would have hypertext infrawhere: a structural underneath so fine and so pervasive, a lexia so completely fragmented, that the concept of lexia ceases to have any meaning: a completely dematerialized lexia, as in [Mou92b] after all.

In [Mou92b] Stuart Moulthrop asks: "Why does the hypertext research community publish its work in print?" At the risk of seeming glib, the answer is obvious: because hypertext is not our native tongue. Many will surely balk at the idea that this needn't be so, that there can exist a natural language in which hypertext carries the very structure of syntax itself: hypertext not as a medium of organizing thoughts, but as a medium of thought. Perhaps in the end this will turn out to be unachievable, but as a focus for poetic experimentation it provides this author with a sustaining vision.

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

Hegel's Hypertext

How to Use http://www.hegel.net/ to Understand Hegel ,

Unfortunately, Lenin's famous aphorism: “It is impossible completely to understand Marx's Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel's Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!!” is more true today and more pressing in its significance than when it was written 80 years ago.

Most Marxists will tell you that Hegel invented dialectics and that he was an ‘objective idealist’, but very, very few have actually read Hegel. However, Marx and Engels wrote very little by way of explaining Hegel’s ideas (Engels’ Socialism: Utopian& Scientific, § II and § I of Ludwig Feuerbach & the End of Classical German Philosophy are the best general introductions available), but we know from Marx’s 1843 Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and his 1844 Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy in General that Marx formed his own view by way of a critique of Hegel, and the 1859 Grundrisse, Marx’s preparatory notes for Capital make it clear that the critique of Hegel was central to his thinking throughout his life.

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

Relevant hyperlinking

Poor quality hypertext is a usability disaster causing annoyance, confusion, and anxiety. Users expect links, and that the links will be relevant and useful.

A good hyperlink is relevant to the surrounding text and provides enough information for the user to make an informed decision about whether to leave the current page they’re on and follow.

Here’s an example of a useful hyperlink:

1 For excellent examples of finely crafted hypertext
2 look no further than kottke.org,
3 the online home of Jason Kottke.

For excellent examples of finely crafted hypertext
look no further than kottke.org,
the online home of Jason Kottke.

The linked text must have relevance, as it’s the first hint the user will receive as to the nature of the link. The test of good link text is whether it can stand alone on a page, outside of the hypertext of which it’s a part, and still make sense.

Links must also be styled differently to the surrounding text. They can be another color than blue, as long as it’s different to the normal text, and that all the links in the page are the same color, so they’ll be clearly visible.

A title attribute is optional, but should be used independently from providing a context because the tool tip only appears when using the mouse. If the link text is sufficient, it’s unnecessary anyway.

Well-crafted hypertext is simple to read and use, and frankly, simple to create! Are you guilty of crimes against hypertext?

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

Hypertext structure history

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

Growing Metabole

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

Purely text-based

Internet is a purely text-based environment, and Berners-Lee and Cailliau's idea of marrying it to hypertext caused a revolution. But text still remains the most important thing.

Despite British Telecom's failed attempt in 2002 to enforce a patent on hyperlinks, the web has become a big force for change. Every possible permutation of three-character dot-com domains has been registered. The BBC has 43 different translations of its website, while social networking site Facebook has 63.Worldwide, 74bn searches are made each month, and the size of the index held by search engines continues to grow. In 2001, a search for 'search engine optimisation' gave up 12,300 results in Google.

Today the term receives 77.8m. The average number of monthly searches per searcher in the UK is 124, the same as the average number of cups of tea per Briton per month. And although those results are delivered in the blink of an eye, according to worldometers.com, users so far this year have spent 240,000bn hours waiting for web pages to download.

Perhaps it was worth the wait. In the US, one in every eight couples getting married last year met over the internet.

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