Gutenberg Galaxy Revis(it)ed: A Brief History of Combinatory, Hypertextual and Collaborative Literature from the Baroque Period to the Present

Literature in computer-based media cannot be contemplated without a long literary tradition.This article aims at substantiating this assumption with numerous examples of combinatory,hypertextual and collaborative texts from German literary history since baroquetimes. Therewith it provides us with a historical basis in order to work out the commonfeatures and differences that with computers have entered literary texts.

Source: author's abstract in book publication

Pull Quotes

The Ars magna sciendi, Athanasius Kircher’s adaptation and elaboration of Lull’s Ars magna, illustrates a common tendency of the Baroque era: In additionto books, alternative Aufschreibesysteme (“systems of notation”) (Kittler) appearthat are storage media of traditional knowledge and generators of new knowledgeat the same time (134).