I started writing my Residua by means of a word-processing system in 1983, only a year after personal computers flooded the market. Since then, all the volumes of my book have been transcribed from paper to electronic form, that is, from hard to soft copy. In 1987 I switched from WordStar 3.4 to WordPerfect 4.2, which will soon be replaced by WordPerfect 5.1. Once the text is in electronic form, such conversions are by-and-large easy.

There are many benefits of word processing, but I will mention just a few. I can print out the Residua in its updated form whenever I please; all the addenda are accommodated automatically. Every error in the text is corrected only once, as soon as it is discovered. The fourteen files with as many yearbooks written since 1976 can be stored on a few diskettes, which are easy to carry or send by mail. I can send my book by telephone to anyone who has compatible electronic equipment.

Now, imagine several technological improvements to my Residua, that is, my data processing and telecommunications hardware and software. First, imagine that you could access via the telephone network not only my book in its present form, but all the texts I have referred to also. By the same token, you could access not only my commentary to those texts, but the commentary of all others. Second, imagine that you could not only read my Residua, but also add your comments to it, as well as to all the other texts you could access through it. You would be able to write addenda equally as easily as I could. Of course, I could access your comments, in addition to the texts referred to by you, and respond to them in turn. Mind you, these improvements are technologically feasible even today, although the task of providing all the requisite linkages between various texts is by no means trivial.

Following Theodor Nelson, the originator and advocate of the idea, the entire network of interwoven texts is called hypertext.[1] In the limit, hypertext encompasses everything ever written. It is the world library at your fingertips. The implications of this idea are so vast that it is meaningful to speak of the hypertext revolution, which can be likened to the Gutenberg revolution.[2] As is the case with printed texts, much nonsense will thrive in hypertext, too. However, there is hope that nonsense will be identified and prevented from spreading in hypertext much more effectively than is the case with printed texts. The ease with which hypertext will evolve into a seamless whole will hopefully serve the cause of liberty.

The reason for my own enthusiasm about hypertext is elsewhere, though. I delight in the fact that it is an ideal vehicle for the intellectual production of the human species, for “[m]an is a creature of notes and comments.”[3] And I delight in the possibility that my Residua will finally find a technological vehicle by means of which it could spread unimpeded.

To Joost Bonsen

Footnotes

1. See, e.g., K.E. Drexler, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, New York: Anchor Press, 1986, pp. 220, 280.

2. Cf. Drexler, op. cit., pp. 229-230.

3. Shalamov, V., Kolyma Tales, New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1982 (first published in 1980), p. 214.