New genres of literature

Hypertext poetry and hypertext fiction are new genres of literature that use the computer screen as medium, rather than the printed page. The literary works rely on the qualities unique to a digital environment, such as linked World Wide Web pages or effects such as sound and movement.

Hypertext "poetry" can consist of words, although not necessarily organized into lines and stanzas, as well as, sounds, visual images, movement or other special effects. Although the poem may dazzling with sounds, perhaps of a lawnmower, while the words "mowing," "stop," "Sunday," and "morning" float across your computer screen in pseudo-three dimensional letters, one will have be hard pressed to identify the use of any formal poetics.

There are an infinite number of new and unusual effects that can be superimposed on text to create a hypertext poem, but below are some examples of types of "clickable" poems.

Definition:

Each word, phrase or line is linked to another page that defines or expands on the idea represented by the text of the poem.
Example: http://www.geocities.com/sarezale/frame2k.html

Movement:

The text of the poem moves as if it is hinged on a wheel while piano music plays in the background.
Example: http://home.ptd.net/~clkpoet/ohanf/oh.html

Make Your Own:The text of the line of poetry is determined by when the reader clicks the "stop" button on his or her browser. The flashing words stop to create a line.
Example: http://www.experimedia.vic.gov.au/~komninos/excorp.html

For more information and more examples of hypertext poetry:http://www.hphoward.demon.co.uk/poetry/hypelink.htm
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/

French thinking

What is involved with French theories, is less the rejection of the rationalist tradition than an interrogation of its key components: an independent, free-standing, knowing subject, the “I” facing an independent, free-standing world. A way of seeing things with an anti-humanist thinking...

The problem is how to get the “I” and the world together, how to bridge the gap that separated them ever since the older picture of a universe everywhere filled with the meanings God originates and guarantees had ceased to be compelling to many.

The solution to the problem in the rationalist tradition is to extend man’s reasoning powers in order to produce finer and finer descriptions of the world, descriptions whose precision can be enhanced by technological innovations (telescopes, microscopes, atom smashers, computers) that are themselves extensions of man’s rational capacities.

The vision is one of a steady progress with the final result to be a complete and accurate — down to the last detail — account of global processes.

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

Whatever works is likely true

According to Pragmatism, the truth or meaning of an idea or a proposition lies in its observable practical consequences rather than anything metaphysical.

It can be summarized by the phrase “whatever works, is likely true.” Because reality changes, “whatever works” will also change — thus, truth must also be changeable and no one can claim to possess any final or ultimate truth.

But It seems to me that some ideas succeed not because they are true, but because the audience attracted to the idea will by its composition be inclined to agree.

An example is a statement that Plato ascribes to Socrates, that “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates meant that he must be free to examine the wisdom of his actions, without the restrictions Athenian voters wished to place upon him, or he would not find it worth living (thus the drinking of the hemlock). That’s certainly a point of view that may be widely shared, although different people and cultures would disagree as to what level of restriction on thoughts or speech might make life not worth living.

While Socrates’ decision is defensible, subsequent philosophers tend to take Socrates’ statement a bit further. They conclude from his statement that it is the process of examining life that gives life its value. Of course philosophers find value in examining the wisdom of ideas and lives, and feel their study of the matter gives them special insights. A philosopher who was unwilling to examine life is a bit of a contradiction in terms. That Socrates was willing to die rather than give up his right to examine his own life has made philosophers sing his praises ever after.

Personally, I have found great value in examining the wisdom of many acts in my life, yet there are many types of people in this world, and if some do not ponder the wisdom of their actions much at all, must we (or particularly they) conclude their life is less worth living? It seems awfully condescending. The people who don’t examine their lives much probably aren’t examining Socrates statement. If they did, they might object to the interpretation with which it is adopted by philosophers.

A less strongly phrased statement might be, “Until you examine your life, you are ignorant of whether it is worth living,” but is even that statement true? Perhaps life is always worth living because of something innate, because of the experiences even an unexamined life gives, or because of the effects a life can have. We ascribe a value to the life of a pet regardless of how unaware the pet is of itself or the wisdom of its own actions.

Whether a life is worth living is a subjective judgment imposed by an observer, not an objective fact. Given the many attributes that might make us conclude a life is worth living, to rest all of a judgment on whether the life is “examined” seems rather excessive. That may be what gives Socrates’ statement its power, but it may also be what robs it of some important truth.
In the spirit of Socrates, here’s a bit of parting wisdom (but even without it I bet your life is worth living): Never trust the admiration of an audience who are made more self important by their admiration.

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

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

Why automated search tools ?

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.

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

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

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