Boundaries and their crossing: Hyperlinks

Digital and electronic
Para-digital
The mechanics of hyperlinks
The conceptual dimension of hyperlinks
Limits of hyperlinks
An example
Digital container and digital discourse
The nature of the boundaries of the website
The nature of the interlacing with other layers

etymology = “hyper” is correct – see Ted Nelson “visible connections” “jumplinks” ~ footnotes

Digital and electronic

A copy of a printed page or of a photograph displayed on a screen (e.g., in a .JPG format) is digital only in a relative sense. “Digital” refers in this case to the way in which the original has been translated in digital format and is reproduced on the screen in the same configuration as the original.

Ii is useful to retain a more restricted sense for the term “digital,” to refer, namely, to its conceptual structure: it is a text that is conceived and realized with a fluidity and elasticity that is not possible in a paper format.

physical medium (the screen) rather than its conceptual consistency (such as searchability and hyperlinking).

At face value, the term “digital text” refers to its being presented in an electronic rather than a a paper embodiment.

Para-digital

Even an electronic version of a text or a photograph

In current parlance, the term “digital” is used in ways that reflect only in part the modalities here outlined. Of particular interest to us is the digital transfer of a paper publication in a .PDF format. This is indeed digital in the technical sense that it relies on the translation of the paper format into digits that can be assembled by the computer for a display practially identical to that of the paper version. As a result there is also the advantage of searchability which is missing in the analog dimension.

However, all the other aspects of a digital dimension are missing, and to emphasize this difference I use the term “para-digital,” in a way that is similar to that which one find, for instance, in the term “para-medic” as opposed to a properly medical doctor.

The mechanics of hyperlinks

correlation to cross-reference

The conceptual dimension of hyperlinks

see deep structure

Limits of hyperlinks

by taking you directly to the fragment, it dulls the sense of the whole

An example

In .

Digital container and digital discourse

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

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:

hyperlinks penetrate boundaries

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 undre 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

I. THEORY – 2. Websites