1. Seminar 3 Hypertext 2 Introduction to the Digital Liberal Arts MDST 3703 / 7703Fall 2010

2. Business Blogging issues? Project descriptions Thursday Topic focused sites Individual meetings We will send out a sign-up list of available dates

3. “Hypertext and Critical Theory”Hypertext 3.0, Ch. 2 George Landow English and Art History Brown University

4. Derrida Bush Barthes Nelson Foucault Baudrillard

5. Bakhtin

6. Where is Julia Kristeva? “Perhaps the most obvious theory that hypertext embodies and makes explicit is Julia Kristeva's (1986) notions of intertextuality: Kristeva, influenced by the work of Bakhtin, charts a three-dimensional textual space whose three "coordinates of dialogue" are the writing subject, the addressee (or ideal reader), and exterior texts; she describes this textual space as intersecting planes which have horizontal and vertical axes …” See http://35.9.119.214/1.2/features/eyman/julia.html (An abandoned site on teaching hypertext)

7. Some Framing Questions Why is the relationship important? Helps us understand the affordances of the medium, for better or for worse Is postmodern critical theory worth fighting for? If so, can hypertext and hypermedia technologies pull it off? If not, can they go in another direction?

8. Brief introduction to structuralism

9. The Semantic Triangle. From C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism, 1923.

10. From Saussure, Ferdinand, Course in general linguistics, 1966 [1916]. Saussure: signs are self-sufficient (No need for reference)

12. From Saussure, Ferdinand, Course in general linguistics, 1966 [1916]. Communication is the exchange of signs

13. Communication = audition/phonation

14. From Shannon, Claude E. “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” Bell Systems Technical Journal 27 (1948): 379-423 and 623–656. Information Theory proves this Communication = coding/decoding

15. If reference is not meaning, then what is?

16. Semantic network of word BITTER

17. The linguistic analogy meaning as structure as a system of differences

18. Basis of culture is in the codenot the discourse (e.g. the writing, not the books) Code = rules and elements for creating patterns = ‘reality’

19. Pomo concepts realized by hypertext The Nature of Text Code Lexia Readerly text Open text (metatext) Intertextual Multivocal De-centered text Virtual text Network … Networks Are non-linear As links, forking paths, a web, a matrix Of lexia, documents, domputers, everything Docuverse or Babel? = Hyper = “above” The network is “above” the text As “natural” (brain, gene, immune system, etc.)

20. Paul Baran, “Introduction to Distributed Communications Network," 1964

21. What are some of the effects of hypertext?

22. Intertextuality:from history to structure … replaces the evolutionary model of literary history with a structural or synchronic model of literature as a sign system. The most salient effect of this strategic change is to free the literary text from psychological, sociological, and historical determinisms, opening it up to an apparently infinite play of relationships.

23. The Writerly Text:Death of the author, God … is a perpetual present, upon which no consequent language (which would inevitably make it past) can be superimposed; the writerly text is ourselves writing, before the infinite play of the world (the world as function) is traversed, intersected, stopped, plasticized by some singular system (Ideology, Genus, Criticism) which reduces the plurality of entrances, the opening of networks, the infinity of languages. (Barthes, S/Z, p. 5)

25. The Victorian Web

27. Exercise: Victorian Web Review Break up into groups and review the Victorian Web in terms of critical hypertext theory Group A: How writerly is the site? Group B: What is the structure of the site? Group C: How would you improve the interactivity of the site? Group D: How would you improve the navigation of the site?

28. Questions Does the site contain lexias? What is the network structure of the site? Does the site exhibit any postmodern traits? Intertextuality, multivocality, de-centeredness, etc.

29. HyperLand A documentary on hypermedia created just as Tim Berners-Lee is inventing the World Wide Web

30. Hyperland Index 14:30 Nelson on Xanadu 17:10 The shape of music 21:43 The shape of stories 24:00 Guernica

31. Picasso, Guernica, 1937

32. Key ideas Characteristics of digital representation Shapes of music and stories Character (adjusting the agents characteristics) Agents as filters Guernica Form and content of a hypermedia work Picasso’s art as hypertext How does Hyperland compare to the web we have?

33. Student-generated Stuff Poetics of reuse Anticipated by HT theorists? Lasting effect of HT on what counts as knowledge work? “Many professors seem to brush aside the use of technology assuming it distracts from the authentic nature of their work. Yet those who have chosen to embrace technology, the way Father Busa did, will discover new pathways, a new staircase in Borges’ library.” “I am the interpreter.”