Lost in the archive: vision, artefact and loss in the evolution of hypertext

How does one write the history of a technical machine? Can we say that technical machines have their own genealogies, their own evolutionary dynamic? The technical artefact constitutes a series of objects, a lineage or a line. At a cursory level, we can see this in the fact that technical machines come in generations - they adapt and adopt characteristics over time, one suppressing the other as it becomes obsolete. It is argued that technics has its own evolutionary dynamic, and that this dynamic stems neither from biology nor from human societies. Yet 'it is impossible to deny the role of human thought in the creation of technical artefacts' (Guattari 1995, p. 37). Stones do not automatically rise up into a wall - humans 'invent' technical objects. This, then, raises the question of technical memory. Is it humans that remember previous generations of machines and transfer their characteristics to new machines? If so, how and where do they remember them? It is suggested that humans learn techniques from technical artefacts, and transfer these between machines. This theory of technical evolution is then used to understand the genealogy of hypertext. The historical differentiations of hypertext in different technical systems is traced. Hypertext is defined as both a technical artefact and also a set of techniques: both are a part of this third milieu, technics. The difference between technical artefact and technical vision is highlighted, and it is suggested that technique and vision change when they are externalised as material artefact. The primary technique traced is association, the organisational principle behind the hypertext systems explored in the manuscript. In conclusion, invention is shown to be an act of exhumation, the transfer and retroactiviation of techniques from the past. This thesis presents an argument for a new model of technical evolution, a model which claims that technics constitutes its own dynamic, and that this dynamic exceeds human evolution. It traces the genealogy of hypertext as a set of techniques and as series of material artefacts. To create this geneaology I draw on interviews conducted with Douglas Engelbart, Ted Nelson and Andries van Dam, as well as a wide variety of primary and secondary resources

Australia's News Media Bargaining Code and the global turn towards platform regulation

Governments across the world are struggling to address the market dominance of technology companies through increased regulation. The Australian Federal government found itself leading the world in platform regulation when, in 2021, it enacted the Australian News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code. The furore surrounding the introduction of the legislation, and Facebook's subsequent Australian ‘news ban’ exposed the limits of a regulatory model that has previously left the tech industry to moderate itself. In this paper, we argue the introduction of the Code is a leading example of a global trajectory towards regulatory change, which sees governments move from a reactive regulation model to specific interventions around the governance of digital media spaces. We discuss how best to measure the successes and failures around this more interventionist model through a case study of the implementation of the Code in Australia. More broadly we consider how global platforms have responded, and whether the reform is an effective regulatory model for other national governments to emulate

Storming the interface: hypertext, desire and technonarcissism

'We are so dazzled by the arrival of the cyborg at the eternal costume ball that we begin to think that it can dance barefoot and without us', writes Michael Joyce of the sweeping liberation claims pervading hypertext theory (Joyce, 1995, p. 196). Particularly common theoretical approaches extend from either the interpretive practices of poststructuralism or reader-response theory, genealogies which praise hypertext for 'realizing' or 'embodying' intersemiotic revolt against linear print fiction and the sorts of subject positions which it engenders. I would like to briefly explore these claims, not simply to criticize them, but to locate the points of intervention which have turned our theory more complex in its course, breaking the flow into wild whorls and eddies as we encounter the discontinuities haunting determinist conceptions of technology. From here, we can view hypertext from the point of view of its potentiality, to suggest that we are always already where it wants to take us and that our task as theorists, if there is one, is to locate the fissures which open beneath our step as we write ourselves across the medium. There is a great deal of debate surrounding the development and 'maturation' of hypertext theory: this is simply the story of how I came to hold the opinion I hold. It begins with the American composition theorists Lanham, Bolter, Landow, Joyce and Douglas, with the quest for a poetics of hypertext

Engelbart's theory of technical evolution

The article discusses the theory of technical evolution by Doug Engelbart in the US. It is not well known that Engelbart has his own theory of technical evolution, a theory which mobilizes technology as its own milieu that evolves in tandem with human socio-cultural and language practices. The aspect of his theory could be seen as a form of technological determinism. According to the beliefs of Engelbart, the tool system currently moves faster than the human system and it takes generations before one can develop the appropriate human infrastructure to deal with changes

The erasure of technology in cultural critique

How can we think technology in its material specificity? Contemporary critical theory treats technology as a trope or representation rather than a physical reality in the world. The "machine" is not just a metaphor for a particular technology, but for technology itself. And at a deeper level, this metaphor enframes technology within a semiotically constituted field. US critic Mark Hansen argues that this perspective gives us no access to the materiality of technology itself, to its impact on our embodied lives. We should abandon the systemic-semiotic approach, or at least find an alternative. In this essay I explore Hansen’s argument and claim that it constructs this as a choice – we either approach technology through the body, or we approach it through language. I argue for a different reading: a reading which does not create a choice between text and materiality, text and technology – but at the same time, a reading which does not depend entirely on cognition and representation, which does not dissolve materiality into thought. I want to think technology as at once material opacity and as representation. And I believe that the elements for this can actually be found in the work of Bernard Stiegler and Jacques Derrida. I want to extricate a politics of technology that sacrifices neither side of the equation, that addresses the specificities of new media technology through the concept of the archive

The technical evolution of Vannevar Bush's Memex

This article describes the evolution of the design of Vannevar Bush's Memex, tracing its roots in Bush's earlier work with analog computing machines, and his understanding of the technique of associative memory. It argues that Memex was the product of a particular engineering culture, and that the machines that preceded Memex---the Differential Analyzer and the Selector in particular---helped engender this culture, and the discourse of analogue computing itself

Network agnosticism: why networks must disappear

This article discusses pervasive computing as it relates to mobile content and mobile networks in particular, and argues that we need a unified networking concept that can bridge fixed and wireless networks and heterogeneous wireless technologies. It also discusses contemporary software applications that provide a content strategy that can transport a users personal content and identity between networks, and calls for more work in this area. The article discusses current interconnectivity and interoperability between networks in Australia and recommends more work in this area

In the garden of forking paths: contingency, interactivity and play in hypertext

The difference between interactivity as it is performed across the page and the screen, maintains Sandy Stone, is that virtual texts and virtual communities can embody a play ethic. Inserted like a mutation into the corporate genome, play ruptures the encyclopaedic desire to follow seamless links to a buried 'meaning' and draws us back to the surface, back into real-time conversation with the machine. Hypertext theorists see this as a tactic of resistance to homogenisation. As we move across a hypertextual reading space, we produce the text in this unfolding now, choosing pathways which form a map in the space of our own memories: where we have been, where we are, where we might yet be

Was my deaf baby 'disabled'? If so, I felt an overwhelming urge to fix her

The deaf community doesn't see deafness as pathology in need of a cure which, as an Australian mother writes, creates a terrible conflict for parents wanting to 'fix' a child