Megatext

Geoff Sirc

It might be nice if Rhetnet could be arranged to suit almost everyone's desires. I'm still heavily influenced by Robert Venturi as rhetor, in this case his notion of the megatexture of buildings--the way the building is (conceptually) almost cubistically broken down into variable layers. I'd like to think about Rhetnet that way. Call them departments, maybe, which might be too print-based for people that bristle at anything smacking of print.

Departments (or whatever) might include, but are not limited to:

• 5-screen things

• The Utne Reader/Harper's idea of cool textual curios salvaged ("digest-ed") from internet-surfing.

• neat data (an interesting elec. conf. transcript, some e-mail someone might be analyzing, whatever e-ethnography people are working on, etc.)

• conference papers or other traditionally scholarly texts

• Miscellaneous stuff

• this, i.e., a list

• interactions with the above (either in next issue or concomitant in the same issue, or a MOO that goes along with each issue, sort of like if every issue of CCC, there were a salon for interested readers of that particular issue to get together and discuss that issue's contents--that would be an interesting appendix to each issue, would make CCC a richer journal for me.)

To Organize: Possibly there could be an annotated CONTENTS list, where the various submissions were abstracted or something. People could choose what they wanted based on the abstracts. The CONTENTS & DEPARTMENTS concept might be used structurally according to Eric's TOPICS functions. In any event, something like this would make Rhetnet be whatever readers were interested in it being.

P.S. I thought Traci Gardner's description of a 4C's room covered in yarn and tacks and scribbled-over index cards and posters was beautiful--highly megatextural.

Date:         Tue, 12 Apr 1994 10:26:43 -0500
Sender:       CyberJournal for Rhetoric and Writing 
From:         "Geoffrey M. Sirc" 
Subject:      Megatext

Do you have something to say?

nick's note

victor's note

traci's hyperyarn scheme

eugene's note