' POSTMODERN REFERENCES ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB

POSTMODERN REFERENCES ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB


THE POSTMODERN PROGRAMME AT SIXTH AVENUE came into being without a measurement of the power of the World Wide Web. The WWW was just becoming available to us as THE PROGRAMME got started. The project could have had a viable life without the WWW. With it, the project took on a dimension undreamed of at the start. We recall the excitement of making our first link to a major web site on postmodernism; it was the Deleuze & Guattari page at the University of Virginia. Compare this discovery to that of Lewis & Clark finding the Columbia River source. The next exciting experience came when we linked our project with a single string of type on screen to that horde. We continued to "crawl the web" (infelicitous as the phrase may be). We established a heterogeneous gaggle of links. As the excitement of sheer discovery diminished, we expected to weave the links between THE PROGRAMME locally and the WWW more meaningfully. Our progress toward that goal proved to be limited. For one thing, it depended upon our weaving of postmodern themes and concepts together across links in the PROGRAMME as well as on the web; and our reach exceeded our grasp. Second, we discovered that web links can be short-lived. A link to a rich site could go cold and leave a gaping hole in our pattern of ideas. Indeed, while we check periodically, some of the links below may have died without our knowledge. (Please email us and let us know if you find cold links so that we can stay current.)

In the early days of the PROGRAMME in 1995 and early 1996, we felt the potential power of the WWW to change fundamental strategies of studying and doing scholarship. We constantly bear in mind George Landow's explanation of the convergence of postmodern critical theory and electronic information technologies as we read material on the WWW in close temporal and spatial proximity to texts of our own and others in our growing bibliography. At the same time, we have to acknowledge that the PROGRAMME has taken only the smallest first steps toward establishing a rich intertextual understanding of postmodernism, based on hypertext links. Our list of links below stands as a monument to good intentions--but also, we hope, as a sampler of what could be done with sufficient time, diligence, and intellectual vigor.


LIST OF THE REFERENCES


30 November 1995. Reorganized 26 December 1995; 17 December 1996. Links checked 30 November 1996: Burnett was not connecting. Updated 10 February 1999
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