Content and Form of This Book
Image credit: Richard Giblett
Here is a plan for how this book will be structured and what it will contain.
Each page will present an idea or an observation. It won't be too long - easy enough to digest. Several links spread throughout each page will lead to related thoughts and associations in other parts of the book. Most links will lead to other pages on this website, but some will direct the reader outside of it. This second category of connections will serve as a substitute for a bibliography (I plan on adding a separate page with all the references at some point in the future). Bearing in mind that some visitors will arrive to the website through search engines - not knowing what to expect - I will place a link to the Start section at the bottom of every page.
What is this book going to about? A lot of things, but not everything. There are some concepts that currently interest me most. They include: communication, human nature, empathy, power, polarization, and truth. This may not seem like a lot. However, it turns out that when I start thinking about these topics, many directly and indirectly related issues come to mind. My goal is to explore them all as much as I can, moving in whatever direction my mind wants to take.
What is this going to look like? I describe this project as a hypertext, which might not mean much without an additional explanation (since the whole internet can be seen one big hypertext). While many texts available online contain links, those usually lead to places outside of the texts they are embedded in. In contrast, ideas I will develop here are going to be connected with each other more than with ideas on the outside. This is not supposed to imply that my thoughts exist in some sort of a vacuum. They would not be possible without other people's ideas, without cultures and communities I am a part of. And yet, this project is supposed to be a book, and books are created to be mostly self-sufficient (at least, while you are reading them).
If you need an image to describe this book's structure, don't think of tree branches. Look at the picture on the top of this page. This graphite on paper drawing was created in 2008 by Richard Giblett, and it is titled Mycelium Rhizome. As it happens, "rhizome" is a botanical term and an important concept within postmodern philosophy. It is a great way to represent nonlinear thinking typical for human beings.
Illustrations for this book come from:
1) My Instagram account.
2) Various online sources requiring image credit.
The logo of the project (appearing in the bottom of every page) was designed via Microsoft Word and Fotor.
About this project: Start page
