disOrder
organizing the self
Hierarchical and distributed webs, once constructed, may offer several possible experiences for the reader, but the writer is done. The author is dead, and the author-function is assumed now by each reader who navigates the web.
In a self-organizing web like that generated by SETI at Home, the writer of the web, SETI, does not die, but continues to add information that changes the possibilities for the reader's experience. Because SETI is not sentient, it cannot itself react to or interact with the web in any way other than to add more data.
But the builder of a knowledge hypertext is sentient, and can respond to the unexpected juxtapositions that emerge in the "between-ness" of hypertext links. It is in this space, and not in the lexia themselves, that the knowledge in hypertext resides. The knowledge-web builder oscillates between writer-function and reader-function as s/he learns from, adds to, and reconfigures the web to reflect new information and new insights. The web becomes a self-organization, inextricable from its reader/writer.- discussion of multiple authorship (WikiWeb)
- pedagogical possiblities - syllawebs (fluid, interactive, multi-mediated, multivocal learning spaces)