Previous: Conclusion Amerika, M. Grammatron. 1997. Viewed April 23, 2009, http://www.grammatron.com/index2.html Arendt, Hannah. 1963, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, NYC repub. Penguin Classics Bardini, T. 2000. Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Barthes, R. 1978 Death of the Author, From Image, Music, Text. Translated by Stephen [...]

Previous: Flow | Next: References The creation of non-linear and networked cultural production is a tradition that has roots that span back nearly a century, if one considers the literary sources from which spatial form is theorized. Humanity questioned the limits of mind, technology, and society during the 20th Century, and especially in the post-World War [...]

Previous: Vector | Next: Conclusion Progressive Vector Diagram of wind patterns over the US maritime coast Cultural production that tracks trends, indices and metadata in order to draw larger inferences about large sets of data or interactions (another form of narrative) is a set of practices which track social and information “flows”. Expanding from the mathematical/logical [...]

Previous: The Wiki | Next: Flows The next step in my discussion of digital narratives and communication in a vast online environment is to consider my metaphor of the vector. This particular idea is far more about mode of communication than structure, and therefore much more relational than our discussion of narrative structure. In the Translator’s [...]

Previous: Forerunners of Hypermedia | Next: Vector Now that we have investigated the roots of hypermedia and open historical document systems, I would like to turn to a contemporary technology, the Wiki. It is a communally editable webpage driven by a server-side database that further complicates the idea of closure in narrative production. The Wiki is [...]

Previous: On Narrative Closure | Next: The Wiki One of the key forerunners of hypermedia — the Memex — was envisioned in 1945, the same year that Frank published his seminal essay. As an aside, the only inference I am making is the odd coincidence of the two appearing at the same time and the evidence [...]

Previous: Collapse of Narrative Flow | Next: Forerunners of Hypermedia In “How Do I Stop This Thing?”: Closure and Indeterminacy in Interactive Narratives , J. Yellowlees Douglas investigates spatial form in hypertextual literature by drawing upon Frank’s ideas of spatial form and nonlinearity and its translation into hypermedia. Douglas notes spatial form’s navigation through parallel levels [...]

Previous: Defining Terms | Next: On Narrative Closure In 1945, Joseph Frank published Spatial Form in Modern Literature in the Sewanee Review , proposing a model of narrative that challenges traditional notions of linear progressions in time. His assertion is that writers such as Eliot, Proust and Joyce have broken the linear model of narrative thus [...]

Previous: Introduction | Next: Joseph Frank and the Collapse of Narrative Flow I have mentioned the terms scalar, vector, and flow. When using these, I want to stress that they are conceptual or visual metaphors which are borrowed from mathematical terms to describe narrative structure, transmission of narrative, and social trends within large sets of transmissions/narratives. [...]

Previous: Table of Contents | Next: Defining Terms One asks, “How to write a chapter that ostensibly has no end?” One of the parameters of this text as commissioned by Turbulence.org in 2009 was that it could be released as a Wiki, one conceivably editable by anyone with permission to do so. This simple fact, contrasted [...]

In addition to your comments and translations, you are invited to edit this chapter. Table of Contents Introduction
Defining Terms
Joseph Frank and the Collapse of Narrative Flow
On Narrative Closure
Forerunners of Hypermedia
The Wiki
Vector
Flow
Conclusion
References