Digital container vs. digital diccourse

Digital container and digital discourse
Formal analysis
The sense of the whole
Segmentation
Surface and deep structure
Poetry

Digital container and digital discourse

A standard website is conceived as a container, i. e. as a receptacle that contains a variable number of items. It is open ended, without an overriding sense of the whole that consitutes the content.

A discourse type website is conceived as a whole from within: it, too, is a receptacle that contains a variable number of itmes, but these have a coherence of their own, that constitute a self-contained whole

The nature of the two types of website is conditioned by two major factors: tyhe nature of the boundaries and the nature of the interlacing.

1. The nature of the boundaries of the website:

in the container type website, the boundaries of the container are determined from the outside, by the nature of the container, not by the coherence of the whole inside;
in a discourse type website, by contrast, the boundaries are determined by the coherence of the whole:

2. The nature of the interlacing with other layers:

in the container type website, interlacing among layers is at the level of the segment, not of the layers qua layers;
in the discourse type, by cnotrast, interlacing is between whole layers qua layers, and it is reciprocal:

there is dynammics in container, but it is anecdotal – see slides about urkesh > sumerians > neolithic
give chart with curving hyperlink
look at hyperlinks under structure

see also under narrative
The structural distinctiveness of a browser edition as implemented in our websites lies in the way in which multiple narratives and multiple data sets are constructed in parallel, so as to complement each other systemically. The full argument emerges only from the dynamic concurrence of these many layers, and depends on all of them at once. This full argument is what I call a digital discourse.

I will illustrate the traits of the website understood as digital sicourse in juxtaposition with those of the website understood as a digital container

Formal analysis

The

The sense of the whole

The configuration as outlined aims to underscore the fact that each individual website is conceived as a compositional whole. This is a fundamental principle that is not generally observed.

https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/the-gestalt-principle-design-theory-for-web-designers–webdesign-1756

Segmentation

Segmentation is not only graphic, it is conceptual in nature, for two main resasons.

(1) hyperlinks lead to segments

(2) dynamic open aggregate (see modalities)
constituetns work in both modalities
segmentation vs. verbosity – skipping or skimming also in the analog modality
see sequentilaity and linearity

Surface and deep structure

Poetry

The ultimate achievement of poetry is that it refuses segmentation. Yes, there may be a verse that stands out and that we carry in memory as particularly evocative. But ultimately every “piece,” i.e., every word or segment of a poem, whether articulated metrically (as with verses) or not, is in absolute need of all the other pieces. That is the supreme beauty of authentic poetry, the sense of explosion one receives when everything blends into an illuminating unity.

It is useful to mention poetry in this context because of the light it sheds on the notion of segmentation in relationship to the whole.

relationship to artificial intelligence
Poetry is a whole (whether a sonnet or a large architectural complex such as Dante’s Comedy) which emerges whole
triumph of the whole
relatioship to words
unified vision exported to words
cannot be rephrased, whereas an argument can

I. THEORY. – 3. Digitsal discourse