Liu 2008

Alan Liu, Local Transcendence

"Transcendental Data: Toward a Cultural History and Aesthetics of the New Encoded Discourse"

new encoding standards, forming a "discourse network 2000" (210)

especially interested in "what will discourse netwrok 2000 mean for the act of authoring?" (210)

"What is the social logic that underlies the techno-logic of discourse network 2000?" (211)

"How is an author now a postindustrial producer?" (211)

"What are the aesthetics of encoded or structured discourse or, as I will term it, of postindustrial dematerialization? And: How is it possible for writers or artists to create in such a medium?" (211)

thought experiment: the problem of sending a poem over the internet to a distant computer, these "idiots savants" of machines

• poor solution is to "transmit procedure" (212) -- difficult to adapt to local needs
• better solution: "break the circuit of transmission and reception into 2 independent parts assisted in their mating by a common standard" (212)
  • this is the database solution, SQL/relational databases