From Novel To Network
The hypertextual platforms are analysed in their literary roots, in particular in the non linear literature with examples taken from J.L.Borges. But the hypertext are classified in relation to the readers position, discussing on the fact that the interactivity turns the reader from the "spectator" of the multilinearity of the literary work to the "player" of the work itself. Gadamer helps us seeing the difference between those two things.
Besides the book analyses the digital writings as forms of content managing, as in the mailing list, with all the consequences that those forms of collaboration bring, as the eventuality of "trolling", or the shared and delayed in time elaboration of contents, which takes with a better completeness in the development of the content itself. For this reason the mailing list are platform still largely used for the production of research material in universities, as they are low cost tools with an high interactive result.
The book studies in deep even the argument of blogs, which add the collaborative characteristics of the mailing list to a form and space very strict and schematic. This makes them let useful to develop structured contents but more useful to spread flash and synthetic news (a famous case is the one of twitter), about some limited aspect of reality. Equally you can consider the ability to comments to blogs post, it is a limited section in which the reader can interact with the work under the condition strictly stated by the author of the work.
