Comments on: Transclusion and Google Print

by: Christy Dena

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 05:29:12 +0000

I like the invocation of Nelson’s ‘transclusion’ as a way to thwart the idea of ‘copying’. In my cross-media research I try and explain the difference between transmedia and repurposing or versioning through the notion a single source with multiple windows. So, this notion has resonnance for me. I like it. Thanks Jeremy!

by: Jeremy Douglass

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 07:01:04 +0000

Also connected to this idea of the unitary (rather than multiple) database text is a discussion of metadata and the networked book over at if:book. Interesting, this penumbra of metadata, which seems to coalesce around some singular thing....

The book in the network is a barnacled spirit, carrying with it the sum of its various accretions. Each book is also its own library by virtue not only of what it links to itself, but of what its readers are linking to, of what its readers are reading. Each book is also a milk crate of earlier drafts. It carries its versions with it. A lot of weight for something physically weightless.

by: steven streight aka vaspers the grate

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 22:47:44 +0000

Thus, electro-telepathy is progressively expanding its territory and external effects.

For one mind to query any other mind in the past, present, or presumably the digitized future, the web must be free, spontaneous, floating luxuriously above the petty strife of human hubris, corporate greed, lawyerly debate on intellectual “property” (what a whopping misnomer par excellance). Mix one part oxymoron with two parts hydromoron, shake vigorously, voila: the quick crucifixation of the poor thought morsel.

A peering into the pyramid reveals that the theatre of colliding ideas will play itself out in the screens of computers filling both earth and outer space.

I mean, to duplicate a slice, a thin slice, of another text, and put in either within another text, or alongside it, ala Derrida and Dada poetics, this is just the circus tent, and not the cotton candy, right?

We will dominate or submit. I choose to tease language and force odd concepts to co-exist in formerly ordinary mind-machines.

Cataclysmic Whisper Transmission Zone: the Blogosphere 4.0

by: Jeremy Douglass

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 19:48:55 +0000

Sure enough, conversational agent gives much more satisfying results. Could you expand on why you prefer the term chatbot - is it identifying with particular technologies and communities of authors, or is it coming out of some particular history...?

by: Jeremy Douglass

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 19:46:05 +0000

Another gigantic transclusion machine (at a more atomic level) is Google Base, just officially out. In fact, the atomic unit of Google Base, the “item,” may not only appear in search results, but “may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle and Google Local.”

Google Base uses an extremely flexible concept of an “item” - broken down by a flexible typology that is user editable, with a huge number of possible field types. To this extent, it doesn’t make sense to discuss it in terms of classic database table or XML design, which focuses on rigid similarity of required values between all members. Methods of customizeable and extensible fields (WRT’s current blog software, WordPress, does a fair bit of this itself) push at the edge of the ‘table’ paradigm, allowing for easy collection of significantly heterogeneous content.