Content and Form of This Book
Image credit: Richard Giblett
Each page of this hypertext book presents an idea or an observation. It is not a comprehensive entry about the topic indicated in its title. Rather, it is just an introduction to my thoughts on this topic.
Most links located on each page will lead to entries within the same book filled with related ideas and associations. Some links will occasionally direct the reader outside of this website. This second category of links will be a part of the future bibliography. (As the hypertext grows, I plan to add a separate page with references). Bearing in mind that some visitors will arrive to the website through search engines, I will place a link to the Start section at the bottom of every page. A blurb on the top of all pages in progress is also meant to help website visitors understanding what kind of project they are looking at.
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, or that I know 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 (deactivated in November 2021).
2) Various online sources requiring image credit.
The logo of the project (appearing in the bottom of every page) was designed by me via Microsoft Word and Fotor.
About this project: Start page
