A SLIDE:

Self-serving theory question of the day: In "Twelve Blue," Michael suggests to the reader "You'll want, I think, to open the space so all twelve threads show, diurnally ( a not terribly obscure word for the weaving and unraveling of time)."  The ancient Greek term for "time," that is the reinventable present occasion, has its roots in weaving -- "kairos."  Is the inevitable approach to "wreading" hypertext a kairotic one?

MichaelJ [to Sandye]: There *are* emerging aesthetic standards for what constitutes good hyperfiction. Kate Hayles and Jane Douglas have written brilliantly about its qualities
Mick asks, "Yet, you're saying the inevitable way to judge quality is chronological, or perhaps "chronic"?"
Mick says, "But the medium is inherently kairotic?  Am I making too much of this?  Just tell me to hush if need be."
MichaelJ says, "Syn-chronic. Mark is right we *must* judge now, history is the accumulation of nows, the silt of the delta of time"
bernstein asks, "Posterity will take care of itself. Apply the standards that matter: does it say something important and true?"
Sandye sighs.. I guess Mick would say that we would have to hold those emerging aesthetic standards up to the test of time ...
bernstein asks, "Is it real or phony?  Does it awaken us or deaden us?"
MichaelJ [to Mick]: Never too much of it.
bernstein says, "How can it be done even better"
Mick [to bernstein]: but you could at least *argue* that "important" is defined by the number of people it affects.
Sandye asks, "so an audience of one is enough?  if it moves me but no one else, it is still great?"
bernstein says, "Mamet has a good essay in his most recent book on judging importance by popularity. It's called "Demagoguery""
Mick [to Sandye]: Nick Negroponte says this medium demands an audience of one.
MichaelJ [to Mick]: Not any more you can't. I've taught through times in the last ten years when people didn't know the Beatles or John Irving and then did again. Click, like a light.
Mick says, "and that takes us back to Stein -- the audience of one is the self."
Mick asks, "The Beatles?  They were a band, right?"
Mick . o O ( just kidding! )
MichaelJ says, "Stein meant something much more complex, the cupola was terrible important in the way Sandye suggested earlier, you have to write for a self who is a stranger and a stranger who is a self, it is reciprocal, a seduction"
MichaelJ says, "that would be "terribly important'"
Mick whews.
Mick says, "Or importantly terrible. Heh.  Seriously ..."
bernstein says, "the notion of weaving recurs in a striking number of hypertexts...."
bernstein says, "Twelve Blue. its name was Penelope (Malloy). Samplers (Larsen)"
MichaelJ says, "We have veered into very interesting ground here, though, in the matter of how the hypertext writer becomes very early on an externalized reader of one as the potentials of the text become combinatorial, locally determined but organic in the whole"
bernstein says, "In Small & Large Pieces (Cramer)."
MichaelJ says, "Quibbling"
bernstein says, "Quibbling"
bernstein says, "(Guyer)"
Mick [to bernstein]: I hope I can get URLs from you so we can link to appropriate places from each name mentioned.
bernstein says, "All of those happen to be in-the-hand, not Web texts."
bernstein says, "Except (of course) Twelve Blue"
Joel smiles.
MichaelJ squeaks commercially and self-promotingly "Uh..  _Twelve Blue_ is a bunch of woven threads.
Mick says, "This listing of texts ..."
Mick says, "It strikes me as interesting in another way ..."
Mick asks, "Could we now, a decade post-afternoon -- start to claim there is a literary hypertext *canon*?"
MichaelJ says, "Why? No more canons. Thanks"
bernstein asks, "what's a canon?"
MichaelJ says, "Fossilized knowledge"
MichaelJ says, "Written by men"
Sandye is going show a slide now...