Untitled - witz cultural

37AN lNTRoDUcrtoN more, since digital information technology stores both alphanumeric text(words) and images as codes, it sees no essential difference between them.With images, as with words, if one manipulates the code, one manipulates thetext that this code preserves and produces. Furthermore, as anyone who hasever resized a web browser window or enlarged a font in a Microsoft Wbrd orPDF file knows, this text-as-code is always adaptable. Because users only experiencea virh.ral image of the text, they can manipulate the version they seewithout affecting the source. Many forms of computer text, in other words,grant the reader more power than does any example of writing or print, thoughoccasionally at the cost of a loss of powerfirl graphic design. E-text documentsalso have permeable limits: borders and edges, like spaces, are matters ofphysicality, materiality, embodiment, but digital text-text woven of codesdoesnot have and cannot have such unity, such closure. The digital text,which exists independent of the place in which we experience it, e-merges asdispersed text. When we discuss hypertext later, we shall see that hypertextuallinking relates in important ways to this property of electronic text.The coded basis of digital text permits it to be processed in various ways,producing documents, for example, that are both searchable and analyzable.Thus users can search electronic texts for letters and other characters, words,or various groups of them. Users can also take advantage of such code-basedtextuality to check the spelling, grammar, and style of digital text. Processabletext also permits text as simulation since changing the code makes the textmove to show things impossible to present with a static image or text. As weshall see when we examine examples of animation in chapter 3, such capacitiespermit one to argue by demonstrating things often too difficult to showeasily with linguistic argument.Digital text can be infinitely duplicated at almost no cost or expenditureof energy. Duplicate the code, duplicate the text-a fact true for images (includingimages of text, as above) or alphabetic text. As Mitchell explains withcharacteristic clarity, "Digital texts, images, and other artifacts begin to behavedifferently from their heavier, materially embedded predecessors. Theybecome nontrivial assets-they are neither depleted not divided when shared,they can be reproduced indefinitely without cost or loss of quality, and theycan be given away without loss to the giver" (Me++, 83). One can just duplicate the code and thereby repeat-reproduce-thetext, thereby affecting thecost (and value) of the text and the potential size of one's audience.Because the codes that constitute electronic text can move at enormousspeed over networks, either locally within organizations or on the Intemet,they create the conditions for new forms of scholarly and other communica-