Professor John Sutherland, a distinguished professor of English at Universities in both the UK and USA , was intrigued by the idea of the "hyperlinked cloud of annotations" which William Gibson's Spook Country was subjected to by the Node Magazine project, and this blog etc.
See:.
Interestingly, he has created his own hyperlinked annotation of his own book, eschewing the use of conventional footnotes, for web URLs and an accompanying website.
In the portal, or 'gateway' notes to websites which follow I have, in the main, avoided reference to the obvious wikipedia, IMDb, ODNB and Britannica sites---although in many cases they will be a reader's first port of call. The principal aim of this e-annotation is to thicken the cultural texture of the book: in a number of places by offering audio-visual, as well as conventional annotation.
Conventional annotation aims to encase knowledge, as apparatus criticus. What I have attempted here is something different. William Gibson, the, pioneer of 'cyberpunk', who has pioneered this kind of web-reference, likens the reader to a worm crawling through cheese. The cheese doesn't change, but every worm creates a different passage through it. The following are my suggested wormholings through, and out of, what I have written.
John Sutherland
Magic Moments: The Books the Boy Loved and Much Else Besides
by John Sutherland
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd (25 Sep 2008)
ISBN-10: 1846680786
ISBN-13: 978-1846680786
RRP: £10.99
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