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MACHINIC FIGUR@TIONS OF WRITING 2.0
Alphabets, ars combinatoria and hypertext
Luís Filipe Teixeira
Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias
Portuguese |
The labyrinthine creation of the alphabet network has
constituted, without any doubt, one of the essential moments towards the
development of the communicational and cultural process. The reflection around
it, specially on the relation between writing and tecnology(ies) amounts, at
least, to the Classic Antiquity, for example to Plato's Cratylo and Phaedro (is
writing a fixation of memory or a carelessness of its exercise?).
Besides representing a symbolic matrix, each of the alphabets is also a product
of an ars combinatoria, a graphical and conceptual base of a cognitive and
cosmological truth, far from a mere fixation (phonetic and signic) of a certain
spoken language by any letter. Such tradition is lost in time, from East to
West, being the hexagram systems of I Ching or the Ars magna of Raymond Lull,
Giordano Bruno and Leibniz some illustrations. In another dimension, it is known
that hypertext is also based in that relational (connective) component and in in
a combinatory network. This paper will take in account the reflexive bridge
between these three «technical» registries: alphabets, ars combinatoria and
hypertext. |
Network culture May 2002