Background: Terms

This entry elaborates on the terms used in the previous entry.

1. What is the docuverse?
2. What is meant by paper document?
3. What are those concepts and conventions and the inherited biases and constraints derived from paper documents?
4. Why use the phrase digital realm?
5. What is meant by digital document?
6. What are the distinct properties of digital documents and paper documents?
7. What does it mean to map and access the interconnective structure of documents?
8. What is the interconnective structure of documents?

1. What is the docuverse?

The docuverse — as in universe of documents — is a term coined by Ted Nelson that describes a universal library system on networked computers. As Nelson writes in Literary Machines:

All of storage near and far must therefore become a united whole— what is now called a “distributed database.” […] The documents and their links unite into what is essentially a swirling complex of equi-accessible unity, a single great universal text and data grid, or, as we call it, the docuverse (Nelson 1987).

In other words, the docuverse is a construct in which documents reside, understood as a metadocument with all the information about the (changes made to the) content, links, and metadata of all documents. Nelson’s vision of the docuverse, Xanadu, is examined in the next entry.

2. What is meant by paper document?

A paper document primarily contains the modality text, and the medium¹ used for its transmission is paper, meaning it encompasses the manuscript and print traditions.

3. What are those conventions and concepts and the inherited biases and constraints derived from paper documents?

Conventions particular to paper documents are derived from what Adriaan van der Weel (2012) calls the Order of the Book — presentation and structure of text based on the form of books and defined by the format of manuscript and print. Engaging with paper documents thus requires familiarity with concepts such as a table of contents, chapters, running head, page numbers, citations, reference lists, appendices, and how they are used as parts of a system. Beyond those pertaining specifically to the paper page are concepts derived from the environments in which people engage with paper documents. Examples are the clipboard, paper bin, folders, files, desktop and activities such as cutting, pasting, highlighting and paging — transferred to the digital realm as metaphorical concepts. These are some of the conventions and concepts derived from paper documents.

Inherited biases and constraints can be seen in the conception of digital documents as files organized into nested folders. How the file system (a paper document management system) has been transferred into the digital realm is grounded in the assumption that all files are independent objects that fit neatly into a hierarchical structure. Even if a file conceptually belongs to multiple categories, it can only exist in one. If it is insisted upon that a file belongs to more than one category, then just as with a paper file, that digital file must be copied to the clipboard and pasted into another folder, and we now have two separate copies.²

Concepts and conventions derived from paper documents have been transferred to the digital realm, inheriting the biases and constraints. It begins at the computer operating system level but permeates the digital realm.

4. Why use the phrase digital realm?

%%Land in land of paper is used to emphasize how documents that take the material form of paper are bound to physical reality. What is possible with text or images or symbols in the land of paper is constrained by what is physically possible.%%

Realm in digital realm is used to emphasize that it is a constructed space. The digital realm is a space in which any conceivable construct can exist, made up of any sets of concepts that take any conceivable shape and behave and interact in any conceivable way. If, for example, the file system is not convenient for organizing documents, then such a system can and should be re-conceived.

5. What is meant by digital document?

Documents that pertain to the digital realm. A digital document primarily contains the modality text, and the medium used for its transmission is digital computers.

6. What are the distinct properties of digital documents and paper documents?

Whereas a paper document primarily contains text and images and other graphic elements, a digital document can also contain video, sound, and other interactive elements. Operating under the premise (substantiated below) that the medium used for the transmission of text yields particular constraints and capacities, two distinct properties are relevant to the juxtaposition of paper documents and digital documents:

1. Text on the paper page is inscribed and static; text in the digital realm is encoded and dynamic (Weel 2012).
2. With text on the paper page, actions are direct; with text in the digital realm, actions are interactive.

1. Text on the paper page is inscribed and static; text in the digital realm is encoded and dynamic.

With text on the paper page, language takes a static material form. From a historical perspective, the materialization of language significantly impacted human cognition. In The Mind on Paper: Reading, Consciousness and Rationality, developmental psychologist David Olson (2017) gives an analysis incorporating a historical account of the relationship between literacy and forms of thought. By his account, engaging and working with paper documents engendered critical thinking and systematic knowledge (Olson 2017). Similar claims are made by Eric Havelock (1976), who in Origins of Western Literacy establishes an integral relationship between the technology of writing and rational and analytic thought. And on the study of reading and its impact on cognition, as Neil Postman (1986) points out, it has been concluded by most scholars “that the sequential, propositional character of the written word fosters what Walter Ong calls the ‘analytic management of knowledge.’”

That is not to suggest that analytic thought and rationality were not possible prior to written language, but to engage with text is “to follow a line of thought, which requires considerable powers of classifying, inference-making and reasoning” and requires mapping ideas, comparing assertions, “connect[ing] one generalization to another” (Postman 1986). For example, from research within the learning sciences, Roy Pea (1985) discusses the form of arguments, contrasting oral and written language, and its impact on logical analysis. With text on the paper page, human memory capacities were extended, allowing an argument to be stored and directly available to the reader/writer to evaluate the relationship between its parts for consistency and locate potential contradictions. With the advent of print technology, in particular, there was a greater capacity for “precision in the transmission of detail,” leading to a “much greater exactness in the representation of knowledge […] through the use of such typically typographic aids as tables and different typefaces, font sizes, and white space as a means of ordering information” (Weel 2012).

Uniformity, predictability, consistency, and standardization were prerequisites for analytical and scientific thinking. (Weel 2012)

These effects on human cognition are related to the staticity of (and what it entails to engage with) text on the paper page.³ In contrast to text on the paper page, digital text is marked by dynamicity and modifiability. At a basic level, digital text is encoded as a bit pattern (e.g., 1010111) representing a character unit (e.g., W). As Stéfan Sinclair and Geoffrey Rockwell (2016) suggest, these properties imply the potential for rearrangement and restructuring (i.e., move these bits here to there, extract only those bits, rearrange them according to this, then that, and put those here). At yet another level, digital text is encoded through a markup language. Encoding text involves “marking up” the structure, the visual presentation, and the metadata—all of which can be utilized to modify (the form, content, and meaning of) texts. For example, a content item that is a title in one document can be transformed into a list item in the same or another document (e.g., an expandable table of contents). Importantly, modification of digital text by modifying the code that transcribes it can be done without repercussions to source content. That is, rearranging parts, transforming between formats, extracting and sorting text segments, and annotating or performing analyses on those extracted text segments involves operations that can be performed without repercussions to the source content. With paper documents, such actions are enacted directly upon the material.

2. With text on the paper page, actions are direct; with text in the digital realm, actions are interactive.

Any action is direct when engaging with text on the paper page. Actions such as writing, underlining, erasing, cutting out, pasting in, folding, stacking, sorting, and resorting, are in a direct relationship between the action, the operations involved in that action, and the perception of that action. In the digital realm, a command — a keystroke, a tap on a touchscreen, a verbal utterance — can equate near-infinite set of (opaque) operations. For example, selecting a particular interactive element through a mouse click can result in an instantaneous rearrangement and transformation of the shape of documents, which can be reversed by selecting another interactive element. Given these distinctive properties, text in the digital realm invites modification of its parts in ways that are infeasible with text on the paper page. This project aims to explore the potential of these properties.

7. What does it mean to map and access the interconnective structure of documents?

To map is the activity of establishing connections by creating links or attaching metadata to documents. Mapping connections can be done by the reader and writer of a document. To access is used to encompass retrieving, bringing into view, filtering, arranging, and traversing documents based on those connections in a visually coherent way.

8. What is the interconnective structure of documents?

The concept of interconnection is elaborated on in the next entry.

Sources

Havelock EA. Origins of Western Literacy. The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education; 1976.

Olson DR. Awakening: Reading and Consciousness. The Mind on Paper: Reading, Consciousness and Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2017.

Nelson TH. Literary Machines: The report on, and of, Project Xanadu concerning word processing, electronic publishing, hypertext, thinkertoys, tomorrow’s intellectual revolution, and certain other topics including knowledge, education and freedom. 87.1. Sausalito, California: Mindful Press; 1987.

Weel A van der. Changing Our Textual Minds: Towards a Digital Order of Knowledge. Manchester University Press; 2012.

Pea RD. Beyond Amplification: Using the Computer to Reorganize Mental Functioning. Educational Psychologist. 1985;20(4):167–82.

Postman N. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Penguin Books; 1986.

Sinclair S, Rockwell G. Text Analysis and Visualization: Making Meaning Count. A New Companion to Digital Humanities. 2016. p. 17.