The hypertext “electronic book” project was initiated by Bernd Wingert and his team at the Kernforschungszentrum Karlsruhe [Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center] (KFZK), today part of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. Though completed in 1991, the hypertext “electronic book” is in many ways more sophisticated than the forms of digital publishing which are common today.

Intended to exploit the nascent participatory potential of the new technological form of publication, the hypertext was designed to replicate and extrapolate salient aspects of the experience of being at one of Vilém Flusser’s lectures. Revolutionary for their time were features such as hyperlinked in-depth elucidations of Flusser’s terminology as well as the possibility to share one’s own comments with others and to ask the professor (or other participants) a question. Another rare treasure for Flusser scholars is the rich set of bibliographic resources hyperlinked to the text.

The text elaborated in the “Flusser Hypertext” comes from a lecture Flusser delivered at the KFZK on March 2, 1989, titled “Schreiben für Publizieren” [Writing for Publishing]. It describes some of the essential virtues and challenges in electronic publishing toward the production of negentropic “new information.” For instance, in digital publishing, by transcoding writing, there is the potential, through the technical interruption of the relation between the writer and the “general realm of dialog,” to produce a communication which is far better able to convey contemporarily pertinent information than is conventional text alone.

Flusser set specific priorities for the development of the hypertext, including that it should avoid redundant information, that it should flow discursively, but also that it should permit disagreement. The “Flusser Hypertext” thus consciously elaborates the potential released in the digital transformation of a lecture. It is a prototype for a digital form of philosophical endeavor.

Original article by Baruch Gottlieb