Superpatron

Michael Joyce's "Of Two Minds: Hypertext, Pedagogy and Poetics", U of Michigan Press, 1995

Michael Joyce's "Of Two Minds: Hypertext, Pedagogy and Poetics" is one of the books on my bookshelf that is for owning, not for borrowing. Published in 1995, it represents the apex of early hypertext writing, but it is constructed completely without the need to reference an actual "world wide web" that actually exists in any form.

Freed of the obligation to describe or think about a hypertext system which now is how most people think about web-based systems, Joyce's work lets you wander through the world of hypertexts that could have been - the one where you can "press the words on a page of a book you're reading to see what's behind them [or] probe the words as you're listening to someone". 

Michael Joyce "sat in" on an online conference I organized at the University of Michigan in the 1980s, and contributed some of his words to my undergraduate education.

Lincolns and Olds, me she ganders.

 

Ever so slightly refocusing my attention to this weblog

A few changes.

This is a post to the Superpatron blog; they have been few and far between. No guarantees on continuity.

There is a change in the subtitle of the blog to note that bookstores and news stands have their patrons as well, and in some very fundamental way it's easier to be a bookstore patron (for purchase or for sale of books) than it is to be a library patron. I have way more to say about bookstores than libraries these days.

Once upon a time I had a blog called "Electronic Paper" that was about some future of reading books on digital devices that were lightweight and portable. That date seems to be here now, rather than in the future. Every once in a while there will be stuff here about electronic books, whether or not a bookstore or a library gets in the path of distribution.

My employer (AnnArbor.com; read my column at AnnArbor.com/vielmetti) follows the ups and downs of Borders, so I'll try not to miss linking to that coverage.

Traffic to this blog peaked when I was posting regularly, and has tailed down to a steady 20-40 per day, completely without any effort from me. I have no idea what is current in some of the worlds I used to track closely. 

Books sorted by color still are wonderful. Books sorted in any old way are always wonderful, especially if there is no trace of Dewey in the ordering. Send me photos.

Ed