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Hypertext
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 ow 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.