Theses on the Metaphors of Digital-Textual History / Martin Paul Eve.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Eve, Martin Paul, 1986- author.

Series:

Text technologies.

Stanford Text Technologies Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Computer science.

Metaphor.

Technology--Language.

Technology.

Text processing (Computer science).

Word processing.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (438 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2024]

Language Note:

In English.

Biography/History:

Martin Paul Eve is Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck, University of London. His previous books include Close Reading with Computers (Stanford, 2019.)

Summary:

"Digital spaces are saturated with metaphor: we have pages, sites, mice, and windows. Yet, in the world of digital textuality, these metaphors no longer function as we might expect. Martin Paul Eve calls attention to the digital-textual metaphors that condition our experience of digital space, and traces their history as they interact with physical cultures. Eve posits that digital-textual metaphors move through three life phases. Initially they are descriptive. Then they encounter a moment of fracture or rupture. Finally, they go on to have a prescriptive life of their own that conditions future possibilities for our text environments - even when the metaphors have become untethered from their original intent. Why is "whitespace" white? Was the digital page always a foregone conclusion? Over a series of theses, Eve addresses these and other questions in order to understand the moments when digital-textual metaphors break and to show us how it is that our textual softwares become locked into paradigms that no longer make sense. Contributing to book history, literary studies, new media studies, and material textual studies, Theses on the Metaphors of Digital-Textual History provides generative insights into the metaphors that define our digital worlds"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgments

One. Theses on the Metaphors of Digital-Textual History

Two. The Virtual Page Almost Never Existed

Three. Digital Whitespace Is the Seriality of Musical Silence

Four. Digital Text Is Geopolitically Structured

Five. Digital Text Is Multidimensional

Six. Windows Are Allegories of Political Liberalism

Seven. Libraries Are Assemblages of Recombinable Anxiety Fragments

Eight. Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost

Nine. Conclusion

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Back Cover.

Notes:

Includes index.

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781503639393

1503639398

OCLC:

1453646111