Brown - 17 views
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We need to see the way documents have served not simply to write, but also to underwrite social interactions; not simply to communicate, but also to coordinate social practices
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new forms of document allowed new forms of community
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These groups can look surprisingly like modern equivalents of the scholarly communities that formed throughout the world in the Renaissance
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The role of documents in linking people
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he importance of documents to the formation of communities.
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document forms both old (like the newspaper) and relatively new (like the television program) have underwritten a sense of community among a disparate and dispersed group of people
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Marginal notes, footnotes, and conventional commentaries are merely the clearest examples of the ways that writing continually provokes more writing and that texts provide context for each other
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Indeed, writing on writing is both literally and metaphorically an important part of the way meaning is negotiated.
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Annotation is a rich cultural practice which helps, if only by the density of comment attached,
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he appearance of entire conventional books at Web sites now supports intertextual research and practices.
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Almost every day a new site appears with searchable and downloadable texts. Some allow commentary, too.
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More generally, creative use of new documents no longer involves direct challenges to old ones
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Rather, these new forms appear to reinvigorate the old, extending their useful social life not ending it.
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primary characteristic of documents is their mobility
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Documents quickly pass beyond the reach and protection of their maker and have to fend for themselves.
