Materiality matters

Starting out from the fact that there is a crucial link between the sensory–motor experience of the materiality of the support and the cognitive processing of the text content, the study conducted by Morineau finds that the e-book does not provide the external indicators tomemory in the way that a print book does.

In the e-book, the connection between the text content and the material support is split up, allowing the technological device to display a multitude of content that can be altered with a click. The book, by contrast, is a physicallyand functionally unitary object where the content cannot be distinguished from thematerial part. Hence, they conclude that the e-book ‘does not serve as an unambiguous index to indicate a field of knowledge on the basis of its particular physical form’ (Morineau et al., 2005, p. 346). This is an interesting conclusion in a time when different versions of the e-book (iRex Technologies’ iLiad, or Amazon’s Kindle, for instance) and other mobile technologies (such as mobile phone novels in Japan: see Ito, Okabe &Matsuda, 2005) are again being launched as potentially replacing the print book (both inand out of schools), after their dismal and quite spectacular failure a decade ago. Once again, the question begs itself: will we be reading novels on screen – perhaps on our mobile phones – in the future?

see Anne Mangen

see FrenchTheory

Vital difference

It is precisely this realism and the biological basis of differentiation that Deleuze eschews in his effort to arrive at a (philosophical) principle of difference in itself.

The roots of such a principle--a principle that will underwrite both Deleuze's philosophical Aufhebung of biology in Difference and Repetition and D+G's marginalization of the organism in A Thousand Plateaus--can be found in Deleuze's interpretation of vital difference as internal difference in Bergsonism.

Introduced in the context of an effort to distinguish Bergsonian creative evolution from Darwinism, this interpretation foregrounds Bergson's stress on the indeterminacy of vital
difference in order to present the Elan vital as the ultimate and purely internal cause of differentiation above and beyond any resistance matter offers to life, and indeed in place of
such resistance. Before expressing itself as material differentiation, that is, the Elan vital differs from itself: it is difference in itself.

What this means is that vital difference is virtual and that expressed difference is the
actualization of virtual life.

from Mark Hansen
Princeton University

Materialities of text

In this post I will focus primarily on a particular feature of literary works -- their physical character, whether audial or visible.

I shall be pointing out why these features are important in a literary point of view and also sketching certain practical means for elucidating these textual features. This last matter -- the central subject of this post -- is also the most difficult. The methodology I shall be discussing requires the scholar to learn to use a new set of scholarly tools.

One final introductory comment. My remarks here apply only to textual works that are instruments of scientific knowledge. The poet's view of text is necessarily very different. To the imagination the materialities of text (oral, written, printed, electronic) are incarnational not vehicular forms. But for the scientist and scholar, the media of expression are primarily conceptual utilities, means rather than ends; to the degree that an expressive form hinders the conceptual goal (whether it be theoretical or practical), to that extent one will seek to evade or supercede it -- perhaps even, in critical times, to develop new intellectual devices. But good poets do not really quarrel with their tools.

As William Morris famously observed, "You can't have art without resistance in the materials".

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

Operator of the future

Memex in use is shown here.

On one transparent screen the operator of the future writes notes and commentary dealing with reference material which is projected on the screen at left. Insertion of the proper code symbols at the bottom of right-hand screen will tie the new item to the earlier one after notes are photographed on supermicrofilm...

See that post with different algorithms in metabole
See the journal French Metablog with today different posts
Enter Hypertextual as a member

Data mining and hypertextual material

An immediate goal of text data mining is to construct synopses of the hypertextual material: summaries of the topics which are covered by the texts in data base according to criteria defined by the scriptor.

Another goal is to identify salient points: concise lists of different topics, if possible in order of importance, adjustable in depth.An important goal is also taxonomy (keywords in the data base): determination of the topics in the documents which are (or should be) of interest to the reader. This is to be followed by classification: the grouping of documents containing different topics, either as defined by the scriptor, or as defined by the information content.

The most valuable help for the hypertextual reader consists of the identification of dependencies of the different topics on each other, especially of unexpected relationships.

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

Hypertext and body integrity

Jay Bolter has claimed that hypertext, as a particular case of computer-aided writing generally, is one metaphor for human cognition.

Whether human cognition is essentially computational is not the point here. Rather, I want to emphasize how this metaphorical relationship conflates questions of hypertext design with questions of the body and bodily integrity, with problematic consequences. Bolter's metaphorical connection between human cognition and hypertext implies that if hypertext is considered a species of AI (that is, as a computational model of human cognition) then it has become a model for nature -- that is, a model for material processes that occur in the body without technological intervention. (Diane Greco)

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