Digital Literature, Networked Fiction, and a Static Web

This year, I was rather excited to take a special topic on digital literature. The course outline seemed interesting and the topic seemed imbued with "newness." Yet, my hopes were quickly dashed. The entire paper was predicated on the concept of a static web. Although there was some emphasis on the phenomenon that we all read a networked fiction differently because our path through the fiction is not dictated by the author but is up to us to select. Indeed, we may read a very different text each time we read the work of fiction. This leads me to the view that the process of selection we carry out is, in one sense, also a process of writing the text; the way we read the fiction writes the text we read. Yet, this was not a view the course accounted for. Indeed, the focus was still very much on the "author" as the sole creator of the text. This view is not only so incredibly flawed but also rather difficult to pin down. Instead of going into great depth, I shall simply move on swiftly.

The course was also predicated on narrative theory. Although there were nods at other modes of theorising, mostly a facile explanation of feminist theory, the dominant rationale was to view the course through a narratological lens. Although this project may have value - and I fully acknowledge that such projects seem rather pointless - it seemed like a weak tool to help us read fictions which are, by their very nature, non-linear. Indeed, the theoretical frame did not account for the new way we use the web - where readers are no longer solely readers and the lines between both are so blurred as to no longer function as worthwhile categories.

Viewing the "author" as sole creator, interpreter, and all-powerful-God of the text, is also at odds with the way we use the web. This view is predicated on a static text - although such staticness is an illusion for digital texts - which remains fixed in perpetuity. How are we to reconcile this static text with the notion that the reader's path through a network fiction is anything but fixed? The two projects seem diametrically opposed to each other. This is one of the sink-holes in the field. And, unfortunately, it seemed the course's rationale was simply to deny the tensions exist. For, if we deny a tension then the burden of intellectual rigour is also reduced.

Webs of Cyberspace (Class 5)

Levels of people/ideas, documents (WWW), and computers(as in physical networks).

Giant Global Graph (networks of people and the communities they make).

Over-laid all is the Semantic web.

Location independence:

Point of access and point of storage is immaterial. Increasingly, there is little distinction between remote and local.

Code can be viewed as a formalised language of communication between two machines.

LAN--> W(ide)AN --> M(etropolitan)AN.

Internet

"Universal networking fabric" - not just an internetwork but THE - definite articles so add excellence.

Consistent trend of exponential growth of servers.

Designed to allow for outages of particular areas - stems from the development of ARPANET in the cold war.

Street Metaphor

The network is the street - the path you take to access the information you desire.

A node is a building on the street - the physical location of said information.

A port is an apartment in that building - the place on that physical location whence information may be accessed.

DNS

Interface human with machine: understandable by humans using the network. So is the primary way for those of us with opposable thumbs to locate what we are wishing to.

Hierarchical conventions of naming - most important last (see postal addresses in the West).

Branches and Leaves on trees - TLD(Top Level Domain)s are major branches on the tree off which the smaller branches, subdomains, are grouped.

gTLDS: .com, .net, .org, .name, .info, etc.

Country-Specific (ccTLDS).

Based on ISO 3116-1 alpha-2 - usually have generic subdomains.

Default is US (.mil, .gov).

Different countries have different conventions - e.g. .edu.au, .edu, .ac.nz, .ac.uk.

Nested subdomains-"subdivide and conquour": up to the domain owner to subdivide as they wish but they should remember that their DNS should be easily memorable by the opposable-thumb possessors who will use the system.

Various ethical issues of DNS assignment covered - including APNIC so we can have fun stalking the owners of a domain name. But, more practically, we can also track down the owner of malicious networks.

.su domain still accepts registrations even after the abolishment of the Soviet Union.

.onion TLD designates anonymous hidden services on Tor network-interesting to know.