=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1628/Future_paper1
|storemode=property
|title=Annotation and Gothic Hypertext
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1628/Future_paper1.pdf
|volume=Vol-1628
|authors=Mark Bernstein
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ht/Bernstein16b
}}
==Annotation and Gothic Hypertext==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1628/Future_paper1.pdf
Annotation and Gothic Hypertext
Mark Bernstein
Eastgate Systems, Inc.
134 Main Street
Watertown MA 02472 USA
+1 617 924 9044
Bernstein@eastgate.com
longer jostle the text on the page, and the chore of shifting
from text to note again – so tedious and distracting when it
ABSTRACT requires riffling pages or fetching books of commentary –
We often treat annotation as a supplement, scribbling tacked on to can now be accomplished by the hypertext link.
the real (hyper) text. Instead, we might view annotation as an
organic process in which the current hypertext grows and is How might we place annotation at the center of
elaborated in ways that are unpredictable but not unconstrained. In hypertextuality?
this, we recognize the old mission of constructive hypertext to
form a seedbed and trellis, a structure for what it becoming. A key
to cultivating constructive spaces that do not decay into greed and 2.ARRIVAL, DEPARTURE
acrimony is sympathy, that the components recognize and serve The study of hypertext rhetoric begins with Landow’s
each other. classic paper on the rhetoric of arrival and departure
[Landow 1987]: the link anchor indicates what the link
CCS Concepts
might offer the reader, and the link destination then
• Software and its engineering ➝ Software creation and explains the link, either confirming or denying the reader’s
management➝Designing Software • Applied implicit theory of the connection the link represents
Computing➝Computers in other domains.
[Bernstein 2015]. Intermedia was, in a fundamental sense,
Keywords a system for annotation, and the annotative nature of its
enduring achievement, now known as The Victorian Web, is
hypertext, hypermedia, literature, fiction, education, unmistakable. Hundreds of hands contribute carefully-
design, implementation, support, history of computing, edited essays, each of which provide interlocking insights
maps, links. on other essays in the curated corpus. Yet, in contrast to
Wikipedia’s banal habit of linking every noun phrase (and
only noun phrases) to its definition, the rhetoric of arrival
and departure provides meaningful and interesting
1.THE FOOTNOTE
connection to give rise to implicit and emergent structure –
We often treat annotation as a supplement, a paratext, as
a structure that has not faded into incoherence after almost
something tacked onto the “real” text either to explain the
three decades of growth.
text, to create a parallel argument, to reflect upon what has
been read, or to interrogate it [Grafton 1997][Marshall 3.NOTES ON NOTES
2009]. In print, annotation is forced – literally – to the On paper, the marginality of margin notes makes dialogue
margins or between the lines – it is almost inevitably among the notes difficult to represent. We have text and
marginal or liminal [Bernstein 1988]. The malleability of notes, but as the notes increase in importance, they begin to
the electronic page suggests that we could, if we wanted, want notes themselves.
retrieve annotation from the margins: annotation need no
Consider, for example, Charlotte Mosley’s edition of
selected letters between the six Mitford sisters [Mosley
2008]. We have 834 pages of text, starting with the
concerns of schoolgirls in the 1920s and ending with those
of elderly ladies in the 1990s. Among Mosley’s copious
notes we find:
• identification and capsule biographies of people
mentioned in the letters.
• contextualization of the letters with regard to events –
marriages, illnesses, publications, changes in political
fortunes – that were obvious to the correspondents but are constraints – the location of the piers, the height of the
obscure to later readers. cornices – and expected work teams, individual masons,
and future generations to realize the plan within those
• translation of nicknames, code-phrases, private
constraints. It was decreed that there would be ornamented
languages, and running jokes. For example, the sisters
capitals, but the design and execution of each capital was
refer to The Queen Mother as “Cake” after an incident in
left to circumstance and to the inspiration of the individual
the 1930s at a wedding reception.
mason. Classical architecture, on the other hand, was based
• corrections where a letter contains misstatements – either on repetition: each capital ought to be identical.
accidental or intentional.
In a façade, we might perhaps require that there be towers
• curatorial notes where a letter that had previously been and designate their base, but the gothic does not insist that
published can no longer be found, or where the text of a the towers be identical – only that they respect each other.
previously-published letter is incomplete or incorrect. Each element is made to reflect those constraints and to
express sympathy to its neighbors.
This apparatus is indispensable, yet it is clear that the notes
are under great pressure. More notes could crowd out the Spuybroek envisions digital designers siting piers and
letters themselves; fewer notes could make them towers and allowing algorithms to explore different ways
incomprehensible. Because the notes do not contain notes the elements could bifurcate, entwine, and elaborate
and seldom indulge in cross-references, the text’s themselves. In the same way, a hypertext contains the seed
construction necessarily assumes that the letters are read in of its own future shape – not imposed by a rigid schematic
sequence; a reader interested in the letters from the 1960s, framework but growing organically from forces arising in
for example, would find no explanation of why the sisters the subject matter.
wrote so often about seeing “Cake.”
5.LOST IN THE CHURCH
The material itself wants notes. The notes themselves call The Gothic facade, Ruskin was at pains to emphasize, put
for notes. The constraints of print resist this call, but print is windows where they were wanted and needed. The
no longer our problem. Palladian, in contrast, places windows for pleasing
symmetry. The Gothic lets the windows reflect the
4.GOTHIC HYPERTEXT underlying structure and the use of the rooms within;
On the one hand, to say that the material itself wants a
neoclassical fixes the windows and lets the rooms adapt to
specific hypertextuality is only to affirm the core intuition
the schematic module.
that underlies hypertext itself: that ideas are intertwingled
and their discussion can be facilitated by representing The anxiety of asymmetric, ad hoc design is confusion and
patterns of interconnection. This is, further, the animating incoherence; the promise is that form can follow function
principle of constructive hypertext, hypertexts that “are
versions of what they are becoming, a structure for what
does not yet exist.”[Joyce 1988]
This notion that a foundation text or set of initial conditions
creates a structural force to guide future elaboration is the
core idea of Spuybroek’s indispensable essay on “The
Digital Nature of Gothic.” Spuybroek, an architect,
considers the essence of digital design and comes to a
conclusion in striking contrast to the Manovich’s
“Database as Symbolic Form” or Murray’s four affordance:
procedural, participatory, encyclopedic, and spatial
[Manovich 2001[[Murray 1997]. Instead, Spuybroek starts
from the ability of digital design systems to promote
autonomous organization and returns to Ruskin’s list of the
qualities of the gothic [Ruskin 1853]:
• Redundancy
• Changefulness
Figure 1. Placing two objects on the plane already
• Rigidity
suggests a host of implicit geometries that can
• Naturalism
guide the placement of additional objects.
• Savageness and Grotesqueness
•
The Gothic architect could not specify every detail of the
building. Instead, the architect set the initial conditions and
and both can grow out of the natural tendencies of material taking, and the system suggests where we might place notes
and the proclivities of the worker at a specific time and and what sort of notes might be needed to maintain the
place. relationships we seem to be suggesting.
The illuminated Gothic page, like the Gothic church and If the system seems to do what we want – if its suggestions
palace, overflows with changeful, organic, ornament. We seem good – then all is well. If the geometry the system
move from text to figure and back to text. Figures illustrate, proposes is not what we have in mind, if we find ourselves
others satirize, and still others simply entertain us with fighting the system rather than collaborating with it, we
complex knots or gorgeous gilding. The book or the might simply instruct the system to construct a different
building may be the work of many hands, all working geometry entirely – one compatible with what we have
together but also independently. The reader – again already created by adopting different constraints and
whether of the gospel or its church – is free to wander suggesting different paths for future elaboration. We can
between figure and text, saint and grotesque, martyr and then proceed with a new geometry.
king, as inclination or need dictates.
7.SYMPATHY
No one worries that people will become lost in church, or In Ruskin’s aesthetics, things may express sympathy for
that nested arguments or discursion will leave visitors things (and people). In the Victorian age, this was a defense
disoriented. of craft against mass production; we could have sympathy
toward – a relationship with – unique and hand-crafted
6.ABUNDANCE objects; even if these objects were not perfectly polished
You are about to read Italo Calvino’s new novel, If
and regular, they were ours, and we also belonged to them.
on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate.
Mass production of identically-polished and perfected
Dispel every other thought. Let the world around
objects was antithetical to sympathy; your grandmother’s
you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always
tableware was part of your family and knew its history
on in the other room. [Calvino 1979].
while the glistening Woolworth’s stainless was identical to
You are about to take notes in a spatial hypertext millions of others[Walton 2011].
environment. Perhaps you are at a conference, or in a
Arts and crafts failed. Handmade goods are costly, and it is
workshop. Begin with an empty map. Add one note, and
better that everyone have forks and plates, even
then another. (Figure 1)
unsympathetic, than to ask most people to go without.
A single note in a VIKI or Tinderbox map merely
Spuybroek argues that, in our digital age, the human part of
represents its contents, but two notes already represent
creation lies increasingly in design, not craft, and that in
themselves and their relationship to each other. That
fact we can employ our slaves of steel to propose and
relationship may be expressed in a rich array of patterns
produce innumerable variations of our designs. We can
[Bernstein 2011]. But, in addition to these patterns, the
select the objects – all equally good – that we choose to
relationship between the two notes also suggests a
find congenial, just as in a potter’s workshop you might
geometry – what graphic designers would call a grid – for
select one from among a shelf of glazed blue coffee mugs –
potential additions. That grid suggests where additional
each slightly different as the potter’s handwork and the
notes might be placed; when the notes actually appear, of
accidents of glaze and kiln dictate, but all basically sound
course, the geometry may change, new opportunities may
mugs for holding coffee. You may like this geometry, I
appear while others may be foreclosed.
prefer that one; in time, they might become our own.
A conventional or classical approach to the grid might call
Sympathy among pages is what allows a curated
for a predetermined, prescriptive geometry [Bernstein
compendium like The Victorian Web to flourish quietly
2002]. More interestingly, we might define a grammar of
while spaces without cultivation – Geocities, Wikipedia,
canonical relationships – vertical and horizontal lists,
the comments section of any news site – descend into
tables, research system and their associated journal papers
acrimony, harassment, and neglect.
– and construct a spatial parser to recognize and regularize
such structures. Spatial hypertext parsers have always The Web forces lexia into competition for attention and
struggled against the ambiguity of actual tableau, in which survival. Lexia that lose must die or transform into
we can recognize lots of structures, only some of which are something else, and their links rot. The monetization of
intended, and might fail to recognize intended structures another site gives us no benefit.
due to an slight misalignment or other trivial
Xanadu fixed lexia in stasis, world and word without end.
discrepancy[Schedel 2015].
The cost was that old versions and old mistakes would
Spuybroek suggests an intriguingly gothic approach: remain forever.
confronted with the myriad geometries that the notes-in-
Sympathy between lexia in a gothic hypertext remediates
progress suggest, we might simply embrace one and allow
competition without requiring that anything be carved in
the computer to elaborate it in detail. We continue our note-
stone. Generosity demands that the lexia send the reader [Grafton 1998) Anthony Grafton, The Footnote, Harvard
away – and that the destinations it proposes be wisely University Press, 1997.
chosen. Similarly, a page with proper and noble character
[Joyce 1988] Michael Joyce, “Siren Shapes: Exploratory
will understand its duty to lexia that rely on it, and will not
and Constructive Hypertext,” Academic Computing
willingly disappear or fecklessly alter its meaning at a
(November, 1988) pp. 11ff
whim.
[Landow 1987] George P. Landow, “Relationally Encoded
Links and the Rhetoric of Hypertext,” Hypertext 87
8.ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Proceedings, 1987.
Thanks to Jamie Blustein and Ann-Barbara Graff for [Manovich 2001] Lev Manovich, The Language Of New
hosting this workshop and for inviting me; to Thomas Media, MIT Press, 2001.
Schedel for an early look at his important dissertation, and
to Lars Spuybroek, George P. Landow, and Stacey Mason [Marshall 2009] Cathy Marshall, Reading and Writing The
for helpful correspondence. Electronic Book, Morgan Claypool, 2009.
[Mosley 2008] Charlotte Mosley, ed., The Mitfords:
Letters Between Six Sisters, Harper Collins, 2008.
9.REFERENCES [Murray 1997] Janet Murray, Hamlet On The Holodeck,
[Bernstein 1988] Mark Bernstein, “The Bookmark and The
The Free Press, 1997.
Compass,” SIGOIS Journal 9 (1988) pp. 34-45.
[Ruskin 1853] John Ruskin, “The Nature Of The Gothic,”
[Bernstein 2002] Mark Bernstein, “Storyspace 1,”
The Stones of Venice, vol. 2, Smith, Elder & Co., 1853.
Proceedings of the 13th ACM Hypertext Conference, 2002.
pp. 172-181 [Schedel 2015] Thomas Schedel, Spatio-Temporal Parsing
in Spatial Hypermedia, doctoral dissertation, Hof
[Bernstein 2011] Mark Bernstein, “Can We Talk About
University, 2015.
Spatial Hypertext?”, Proceedings of the 22nd ACM
Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, June 6-9, 2011, [Spuybroek 2011] Lars Spuybroek, The Sympathy Of
Toronto. pp. 103-112 Things: Ruskin and the Ecology Of Design, NAi Publishers,
2011
[Bernstein 2015] Mark Bernstein, Getting Started With
Hypertext Narrative, Eastgate Systems, 2015. [Walton 2011] Jo Walton, Among Others, Tor Books, 2011.
[Calvino 1979] Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a
traveler, William Weaver, trans., Everyman, 1979.