Node
Related: connection - link - network - nexus - note - rhizome
The Arcades Project (1927 - 1940) - Walter Benjamin [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK] [...]
Nodes are called convolutes in this work by Walter Benjamin
In Georges Bataille any human being is no more than a conduit for communicative process, a channel for ideas which pass through him/her."If, as it appears to me, a book is communication, then the author is only a link among many readings." The author is simply a node on a network, through which ideas pass. [Oct 2006]
Definition
A node is a basic unit used to build data structures, such as linked lists and tree data structures. Nodes contain data and/or links to other nodes. Links between nodes are often implemented by pointers or references. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node [May 2004]Author as node
In Bataille any human being is no more than a conduit for communicative process, a channel for ideas which pass through him/her."If, as it appears to me, a book is communication, then the author is only a link among many readings."* The author is simply a node on a network, through which ideas pass.* The quotation is taken from Volume VI of Bataille's complete works, La Somme athéologique II. Sur Nietzsche. Memorandum. Annexes. (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), p. 408, translated by Michele H. Richman in Reading Georges Bataille: Beyond the Gift (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1982), p. 130. Bataille employs this notion of communication in the context of his critique of Jean-Paul Sartre's notion of the subject as cogito: "The cogito, for Sartre, is the inviolable, atemporal, irreducible foundation.... For me, it exists only within a relation... it is a network of communications, existing within time. The atom refers to a wave: to language, words exchanged, books written and read. Sartre reduces a book to the intentions of an author, the author. If, as it appears to me, a book is communication, the author is only a link among many different readings." (Richman, 130).
-- Bernardo Attias http://acjournal.org/holdings/vol6/iss3/responses/attias/virus.html, accessed May 2004
Nodes in a hypertext system
Build the web. Articles in an encyclopedia are nodes in a hypertext system. Don't just write the article, but also consider its place in the link web. Make upward links to categories and contexts (Charles Darwin was a biologist, Sahara is a desert in Africa, the Enlightenment happened in the 18th century). Make sideways links to neighboring articles (for proton see also electron, Oregon borders on California). Don't build category trees too deep and narrow, or too flat. Writing category directories first (top-down) will help ensure that subcategory articles get useful names. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Build_the_web [Dec 2004]
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