The Web and the Text are intricate networks of words, things, people and the relationships between them.
By form, the text and the Web share a lot of common traits. More or less decentralized (no top-down hierarchies included), open to new elements and fostering the exchange of knowledge.
By function, texts and the web are intriguingly similar too: both used to connect, collaborate, co-exist.
Text, Web and Other Web-like structures
Text and Web alike are powerful means for transferring meaning. The first one millennia old, the second one less than 30 years young, yet so intricately woven in our understanding of how we communicate, of the ways we “connect the dots”, and build our society structures.
Think of it, web-like structures are key to the way we build relationships, research, connect, exchange not only good services/money, but also thoughts, ideas, insights.
A log of our heart and mind journeys towards knowledge, both text and the web map, represent and serve as webby vessels for transporting information across time and space.
The Texts on the Web and the Webs in the Texts
When texts met the web and the web met the intricate nets of meaning, textual sources inevitably started changing, transforming, the way we:
1. perceive connecting (It’s ubiquitous now)
2. read and write – more and more people (and machines!) have access to publishing and researching
3. store, search and research information (maturing semantic web technologies now allow for more sophisticated knowledge representation)
Inevitably these changes affected all areas of our lives, the way we use language included. This made seeing and feeling Writing as Giving possible and forged the unfolding of a Brave New Text.
How Interconnectedness Changed Us and Our Texts
With the advent of the Web, texts turned from a relatively static, not easy to find rather closed systems, into dynamic, open-ended, relatively easy to find (and search through) entities.
The fabric of the web, texts and our lives did change. Offline and online began to merge and the boundaries between them blurred.
We became never-ending stories reaching out to find possible continuations.
So did our texts, so did our World Wide Web.
