Untitled - witz cultural

45AN lNrRoDUcrloN a vast sea of data bases systemizingaTl of human cognition" (Electric Language,l0-ll). The manipulability of the scholarly text, which derives fromthe ability of computers to search databases with enormous speed, also permitsfull-text searches, printed and dynamic concordances, and other kindsof processing that allow scholars in the humanities to ask new kinds of questions.Moreover, as one writes, "the text in progress becomes interconnectedand linked with the entire world of inform anon" (Electic Language, 161).Third, the electronic virfual text, whose appearance and form readers cancustomize as they see fit, also has the potential to add an entirely new element-theelectronic or virhral link that reconfigures text as we who havegrown up with books have experienced it. Electronic linking creates hypertext,a form of textuality composed of blocks and links that permits multilinearreading paths. As Heim has argued, electronic word processing inevitablyproduceslinkages, and these linkages move text, readers, andwritersinto a new writing space:::::;;':'ff ."11;i ;: H*11:1',H':il,T rilff [ ffi :::::17precedented linkage oftext. By linkage I mean not some loose physicalconnection likediscrete booksharing a common physical space in the library. Text derives originallyfrom the Latin word for weaving and for interwoven material, and it has come to haveextraordinary accuracy ofmeaningthe case ofword processing. Linkagethe electronicelement is interactive, that is, texts can be brought instantly into the same psychicframework. (Electric Language,l50-Gl )The presence of multiple reading paths, which shift the balance betweenreader and writer, thereby creating Barthes's writerly text, also creates a textthat exists far less independently of commentary, anaTogues, and traditionsthan does printed text. This kind of democratization not only reduces the hierarchicalseparation between the so-called main text and the annotation,which now exist as independent texts, reading units, or lexias, but it alsoblurs the boundaries of individual texts. In so doing, electronic linking reconfiguresour experience of both author and authorial property, and thisreconception ofthese ideas promises to affect our conceptions ofboth the authors(and authority) of terts we study and of ourselves as authors.Equally important, all these changes take place in an electronic environment,the Nelsonian docuverse, in which publication changes meaning. Hypertext,far more than any other aspect of computing, promises to make publicationa matter of gaining access to electronic networks. For the time being