Harpold 2009: Difference between revisions
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== "A Future Device for Individual Use" == | == "A Future Device for Individual Use" == | ||
Ted Nelson's definition of hypertext (15) -- "hypertext is, then, first a practice of composition: hypertexts comprise other textual objects" (15/1.03) | '''Ted Nelson's definition of hypertext''' (15) -- "hypertext is, then, first a practice of composition: hypertexts comprise other textual objects" (15/1.03) | ||
:"In Nelson's initial formula, hypertext begins by being spread over the gamut of prior and possible textual practices as a boundary phenomenon: joined to and depending on existing habits of writing and reading -- especially those derived from print and marked by its discontents -- and reaching beyond them, into conjectural habits of a new technical regime, more fluid, more varied, and more extensive than its precursors." (16/1.04) | :"In Nelson's initial formula, hypertext begins by being spread over the gamut of prior and possible textual practices as a boundary phenomenon: joined to and depending on existing habits of writing and reading -- especially those derived from print and marked by its discontents -- and reaching beyond them, into conjectural habits of a new technical regime, more fluid, more varied, and more extensive than its precursors." (16/1.04) | ||
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'''Memex II''' -- a more "intimate" device; "supplementation has crossed into prosthesis" (40/1.50) | '''Memex II''' -- a more "intimate" device; "supplementation has crossed into prosthesis" (40/1.50) | ||
* trail and image are "functually homologous, each considered in its own right and sustained according to closely related economies of manipulation and transmission" (42/1.53) | |||
:"the later Memexes are in this respect less models for a new kind of mental furniture than tropes -- for memory, for textual fields, for ill-defined points of contact between them, in the shape of furniture." (41) | |||
Revision as of 19:08, 25 September 2010
Harpold, Terry. Ex-foliations: Reading Machines and the Upgrade Path. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
"A Future Device for Individual Use"
Ted Nelson's definition of hypertext (15) -- "hypertext is, then, first a practice of composition: hypertexts comprise other textual objects" (15/1.03)
- "In Nelson's initial formula, hypertext begins by being spread over the gamut of prior and possible textual practices as a boundary phenomenon: joined to and depending on existing habits of writing and reading -- especially those derived from print and marked by its discontents -- and reaching beyond them, into conjectural habits of a new technical regime, more fluid, more varied, and more extensive than its precursors." (16/1.04)
hypertext often defined negatively against print ("Hypertext is a kind of text inconveniently realized in print." (17/1.06)) but readerly practices differ (17/1.07)
Memex -- close reading of its illustration of readerly practices, its connection to traditions of Wunderkammer, automata, Antonello da Messina's painting of Jerome, etc.
connection between war machines and Bush's archival devices
- "It is in this context that the real basis of the archive, despite its repression in the figure of seamless conversion, returns from repression." (33/1.36)
inside/outside in the archive (34-4/1.38) -- interiority of the Memex desk, exteriority of its trails leading outward (35-6/1.40-1)
Memex II -- a more "intimate" device; "supplementation has crossed into prosthesis" (40/1.50)
- trail and image are "functually homologous, each considered in its own right and sustained according to closely related economies of manipulation and transmission" (42/1.53)
- "the later Memexes are in this respect less models for a new kind of mental furniture than tropes -- for memory, for textual fields, for ill-defined points of contact between them, in the shape of furniture." (41)