Digital discourse

Giorgio Buccellati – July 2023

Theoretical and functional aspects

One will find a brief overview in Cybernetica Mesopotamica, relating both to theory (the notion of digital discourse proper), and to how the system functions (the notion of interplanarity).

A full treatment is reserved for a separate website dedicated in full to the underlying theory (d-discourse.net).

Here I will address briefly the two major aspects of the system as they relate to the bibliographical dimension.

Narrative

In the 4banks websites, multiple narratives are found in Part I, the ARGUMENT section, and they engage digitally with each other. While each narrative is unilinear in an of itself, it invokes multilinearity and depends on it.

One limitation in the first version of the websites is that the core narrative is in fact represented by a non-digital narrative, a printed book. This is due to the nature of the formation process through which the project has matured; in subsequent versions, the core narrative will be fully digital. A printed embodiment gives rise to a hybrid system, which refers to the book as an outer point of reference, only partly integrated in the digital dimension of the website. This partial integration is obtained through summaries and excerpts.

Whether hybrid or fully digital, the system entails multiple narrative threads or expository planes that develop the shared core argument seen as the primary plane. Specific examples will be given in the various websites (e. g., in the Religion website).

Database

The 4banks websites do not have tabular databases (except in a limited way in the indices), but the RECORD section of each website is in effect the conceptual equivalent of a (tabular) database. The information is accessible here outside the narrative thread that links the various items, either by going directly to a bibliographical item one is interested in, or by using the various types of indices and search functions.

On the other hand, each item in the database has explicit links to various other narrative layers (the arrows to the outside) and within the items themselves. This gives a special dynamic dimension to our databases, one that helps actualize in new ways the full potential of the digital medium.

Two pre-digital antecedents

The bookwheel

     This "ingenious" machine designed in 1588 by Agostino Ramelli (Ramelli 1588 Machines) allows a reader to rotate a wheel on which some twelve books are placed, open at any given page. Each opened book may be seen as a plane, and the rotation of the wheel would have (if only physically) the effect of allowing multi-planarity.
     Note. The pertinent Wikipedia article is particularly well informed and illustrated. See also Garber 2013 Kindle.
     The organization of the material may properly be said to be multi-planar. Each book is open to a given page, and thus leads to a given point in the argument contained therein, The long argument in the book, and the specific argument to which the page is open, is a plane in the proper sense of the word.
     We do not have interplanarity because the planes were not written in function of each other. And of course access to the planes is here very limited because of the number of books allowed and because of the physical effort that is still required in operating the machine.

The syntopicon

Between 1945 and 1952, Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins undertook a massive enterprise resulting in the publication of fifty-four volumes containing the "Great Books of the Western World." It contained 443 works by 71 authors, deemed to represent the "Western Canon."

     The Great Books collection was linked to a two volume set that presented a highly structured index, called Syntopicon. It contains 102 themes (called "Great Ideas"), each with an essay that develops the theme giving ample references to the authors represented in the Great Books series.
     As an example (to the right), chapter 6, dedicated to "Beauty," consists of a seven page essay, followed by a set of "topics" (top image at the right).
     This list of topics is followed by six pages with references to specific passages within the books contained in the Great Books collection (see a sample page at the right).
     One final page gives citations to other authors not present in the Great Books collection.

The list of topic for "Beauty" and a sample page of the entries for two of the topics (highlighted)

It was an enormous undertaking, one that was made possible through a vast institutional and financial support (see the instructive article in Wikipedia). Conceptually, it may be seen as a faint anticipation of the interplanar type of website which I am advocating here: it is as if Adler were sensing the potential that the world wide web would make possible only a few decades later. But in the Great Books the “planes” are constrained, physically, in such a manner that the interaction among planes is extremely limited (we might call it a para-planar setting).

The digital environment changes all this in a radical way: the fact that the interconnection among planes is instant, across an immeasurably larger universe than the one of the fifty-four volumes of the Great Books, creates an epistemic system all its own. One that we are just now beginning to be able to envisage.

The reason we may think of an interplanar dimension rests on what is a deeper assumption of the project, namely that the western “canon” depends on such a commonality of intents (the “Great Ideas”) that it may be considered as if a coherent conceptual framework, in some broad sense comparable to what is an author’s mindset. In this very broad sense one might say that the planes are written in function of each other, because they share commonalities at a very deep level.

Conceptual relevance

It is useful to look at these two pre-digital antecedents that aimed, in very different ways, to achieve the equivalent of the interplanarity effect I have been discussing. They are both bibliographical in nature, and thus they are particularly fitting in this context.

If we look at the details of section 2 on “Beauty in nature and in art” we see precise references to five volumes by ancient philosophers, three volumes by medieval authors, and nine volumes by modern authors. These volumes are all in the collection, thus guaranteeing accessibility without having to go to one or more library. This was an appealing prospect only a few decades ago. The “Open Access” trend that has developed since, made possible by the digital setting, had changed all that – not only in terms of ease but also in terms of the range of works that can be made available.

There is one useful conclusion that can be drawn from these examples. Both present a self-contained whole: the books chosen by the reader and placed on the bookwheel, the western canon in the Great Books project. This imposes a limitation; but it also proposes an horizon. And this is the dimension that is most missing in the current use of websites as epistemic systems.

Inspectional reading

The underlying philosophy that governed the Great Books project is presented in Adler & Van Doren 1972 How To. One aspect in particular is relevant for the bibliographical entries in the 4Banks cluster: a first approach to a book where one wishes to gain a sense of the whole from looking at some of the segments that build up the argument. This has a direct bearing on our understanding of what a digital discourse aims to achieve.

At first blush, the action of “browsing” a website seems to be the same as Inspectional reading. In fact, it is quite the opposite, for two reasons. (1) Browsing tends to be non-directional: it springs from curiosity, and has at best a vague notion of a goal one wishes to achieve. (2) There is no sense of the whole within which browsing takes place: even the single website, not to mention the world wide web, are very opaque entities, with no sense of boundaries.

It is a question of perception. The perception of a printed book shows it at once as a physically self-contained whole: just holding it in one’s hands conveys a sense of a beginning and an end, the whole beckoning from cover to cover. An “inspectional reading” moves within those boundaries: one aims to obtain, from some segments, a view of the whole which we perceive to be behind them. It is the same experience as looking at a landscape from a distance, figuring out its contours before entering it and discovering from within the sequence of views and signposts that constitute the whole.

The perception of a website as currently in use is totally different. A website does not declare itself as a whole: it appeals, also visually, through a given detail, and leads the “user” (who is really not a “reader”) from one feature to the next because each feature suggests the other, not because we have a sense of direction and finality. We are indeed “navigating” (another indicative term, besides “browsing”) without a sense of the horizon or of a destination. There is a seducing quality to each moment, each leading to the next – but not to a well defined target.

By way of contrast, an interplanar website declares itself as a whole, primarily through a a definition of boundaries, which is achieved through a series of side bars, like ones here to the left. The full content of the website is thus always apparent, as well as the point at which one is at any given moment.

It is within this context that the notion of “browsing” may be properly understood as a form of (digital) “inspectional reading.” The subdivision of the page into shorter sections, and the highlighting of key words within each paragraph, allows the one who is now a “reader” (not just a “user”) to glance at the full sequence of elements and thus to gain a sense of the flow of the argument.

Mesopotamia

The Land of the Four River Banks

I. Methodology2. Digital dimension