Slides from the International Forum of the Faculty of Slavic Studies at the Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” 2019 where I talked about how I saw digital text. First published at: http://www.teodorapetkova.com/intertextuality/digital-text-as-a-phenomenon-of-culture/

1. Digital Text as a Phenomenon of
Culture
Teodora Petkova
International Forum of the Faculty of Slavic Studies at the Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski"
2019

2. What makes digital
text different?
I. Text-specific differences
1. Hypertext
2. Ease of publishing, distribution, access
(search/retrieval)
3. Non-linearity, fragmentation
4. Potentially all kinds of containers (DNA
included)
II. Context-specific differences (where
culture is a layer of meaning, adding
context)
1. New situation (both communicational and
one related to the human condition)
2. Algorithmic audiencesImage from Dokieli: http://csarven.ca/dokieli-
rww#461819979

3. How does that
difference manifest
within our culture
(of reading and
writing)?
● New interpretative routes (cf.
F. Rastier)
● Yet another layer in the
fabrics of the multitextual
animal (cf. B. Bogdanov)
● New ways of retrieving with
text (semantic search)
● Liberature-type context

4. New Interpretative
Routes

5. New Interpretative Routes
I am a human
I am not a robot
Remember me

6. New Interpretative
Routes: Poiesis* par
excellence!
(cf. Socrates/Via Heidegger)
Plato tells us what this bringing is in a
sentence from the Symposium (205b) [...]
"Every occasion for whatever passes
over and goes forward into presencing
from that which is not presencing is
poiesis, is bringing-forth"

7. New
Interpretative
Routes
See: http://libraryofbabel.info/index.html

8. Yet another layer
(code) in the fabrics of
the multitextual animal

9. Yet another layer
(code) in the
fabrics of the
multitextual animal
We can look at communication on the Web through the perspective of intertextuality (as a
macrotext surrounding the texts we communicate by) and also through the work of algorithms that
operate with texts on our behalf.

10. Yet another layer
(code) in the
fabrics of the
multitextual animal
Text exists by at least two layers on the Web: a human-readable one and a
machine-processable one.

11. Yet another layer
(code) in the
fabrics of the
multitextual animal
On one hand, text exists in the context of the
social and communicative fabrics of us, the
multi textual beings. On the other hand, text
resides in the context of the technological
constructs that we recently began to use in
order to communicate through them.
Assemblages of formalized language,
computational meaning and complex rules
for expressing, transferring and decoding
messages.
The Two-Faced
Digital Text

12. Speaking of
formalized
language...

13. The two-faced
digital text is hard
to understand and
create.
Processing text presents challenges at many levels, from
handling character encodings to inferring meaning in the
context of the world around us*. Our “new librarians” - the
search engines are yet to tame levels like characters,
morphemes, sentences, paragraphs, documents, corpora
etc.
[* cit. “Taming Text”]

14. New Ways of
Working with Text

15. New Ways of
Working with
Text
(Semantic) search of texts
Image from:
https://www.opensemanticsearch.org/doc/sea
rch/graph

16. New Ways of
Working with
Text
Simply said “automata” fetching
texts around.

17. Liberature-type
context

18. Liberature-type
context
● Astounding amount of documents on the Web
[The Indexed Web contains at least 5.29 billion pages
(Sunday, 19 May, 2019).
https://www.worldwidewebsize.com]
● Context collapse is a concept used by academics writing
about the effects of social media. It refers to the infinite
audience possible online as opposed to the limited groups
a person normally interacts with face to face.
● Giant scale of inscribing words, thoughts and
interactions on the Web’s tabula

19. Liberature-type
context
Everybody writes and reads on the
Web, all around.
This is how someone named a file with the
image of the Sofia University.

20. Liberature-
typecontext
Codes overlap. There is no one “binge”, The way we perceive
and represent transforms.
In a recent share, a Bulgarian wrote that if you write and essay, you can enter a
contest for X thing. And then people began writing the word essay (есе) under
the share…. [ref. ]

21. Parallely to these
collapsing codes of
understanding and
emerging codes of
misunderstanding, are
increasing number of
digitized libraries - gems
full of knowledge and
semantic networks.

22. And that
changes how we
interact with
text, how we
hold our internal
and external
dialogues.
The change takes place by a. A
transformation in our culture of search and
b. A transformation in the way we exchange,
find and do things on and off the Web.

23. The Web Genie* is Set Free!
● More and more connected people (words and devices)
● Many-layered infrastructures of code and culture
● “Smart” searching and tagging
● We talk, understand and do in an open, collaborative way
* “Web genie” is borrowed from the “Creative Web Writing”, p. 14

24. The Genie of the
Dialogue
We began to realize our
interconnectedness on the
Web and our responsibility
for this share cyberspace - a
giant corpus of texts and
data, dialogues and deeds.
Here are some examples of shared
directions::
● Contract for the Web
● A digital Humanities manifesto
● The Cluetrain Manifesto
● Data Values and Principles

25. Of course, as things
go, paradoxically,
many times the
genie of the dialogue
is locked in
unreadable text
formats...leaving
OBSCURE traces of
semiotic process (cf.
Cf. “semiotic
processes leave a
physical trace or
nevertheless leave a
trace”, The New
Writing
Environment)
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26. Reminding us
the the digital
gap is not digital
at all...
We can’t even get to a shared understanding of
how to cite…
And this is not about technology or digitalization. It
is about shared understanding and collaboration
based ot common starting points.

27. One such starting
point is the Digital
Humanities
manifesto
a universe in which: a) print is no longer the exclusive or the normative medium in
which knowledge is produced and/or disseminated; instead, print finds itself
absorbed into new, multimedia configurations; and b) digital tools, techniques, and
media have altered the production and dissemination of knowledge in the arts,
human and social sciences. The Digital Humanities seeks to play an inaugural role
with respect to a world in which, no longer the sole producers, stewards, and
disseminators of knowledge or culture, universities are called upon to shape
natively digital models of scholarly discourse for the newly emergent public
spheres of the present era (the www, the blogosphere, digital libraries, etc.),
to model excellence and innovation in these domains, and to facilitate the
formation of networks of knowledge production, exchange, and dissemination that
are, at once, global and local.
http://www.humanitiesblast.com/manifesto/Manifesto_V2.pdf
Today, the universitas (universe of knowledge) has become
far too vast, multilayered, and complex to be contained
within the walls of any single institution, even one as
broadly conceived as the university.

28. Digital text
brings us into
new dimensions
of culture
We are now to consider (and
figure out) an ecology of digital
being (and WRITING) on the
Web.
Image and thinking from:
http://www.teodorapetkova.com/poiesis-of-
relationships/an-ecology-of-digital-being-of-
sorts/

29. And before a
simple choice:
how to put
thoughts into
words (and
code) on the
Web
One possible way forward is the understanding that digital text
and its role in life are largely related to the realization of the
interconnectivity, intertextuality and the living ecosystems - all
moving parts of the text in the Web.
Such awareness can help us recognize the responsibility and the
possibility that digital text opens to us:
● to be part of a huge textual corpus, configured ad hoc by a
dynamics of code and culture.
● to continue to be multitextual beings who also teach their
"new librarians" what things (and texts) are, without letting
words and worlds freeze into closed representation and
absolute comprehension.

30. Thank you! Image: Chronotext, see:
https://vimeo.com/96535721
Email me at:
ttpetkova@uni-sofia.bg or at
toshko.afrikanski@gmail.com :)