Kittler, Discourse Networks, 1800/1900, trans. Technologies like that of book printing and the institutions coupled to it, such as literature and the university, thus constituted a historically very powerful formation….Archeologies of the present must also take into account data storage, transmission, and calculation in technological media.

Or - Liu quoting Kittler - “The term discourse network.can also designate the network of technologies and institutions that allow a given culture to select, store, and process relevant data. We’re all writing these tiny text-objects, (or uploading images or sounds), that are furnished with meta-data by the softwares we use, and are then possibly ‘endlessly’ redistributed over the networks, and aggregated according to various ‘preferences’, in various contexts (again, in possibly endless combinations).Ī discourse network is a discursive circuit. (And one can add the so-called Web 2.0-stuff). That is very close to what I sometimes call the php/mySQL or database-turn in online publishing.

Liu rightly identifyies XML and the ideology of division of content and presentation as the fundaments of discourse network 2000. I find Alan Liu’s ‘Transcendental Data’ from Critical Inquiry 31 a very interesting article because he tries to outline how the discourse network 2000 works - in reference to Kittler’s concept of the discourse network 1800 & 1900.

Voodoopad writing excuses