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"...the true and daily myths of the dream and of history explored in Finnegans Wake..." --Jacques Mercanton [cite]
This page is a first attempt at driving the 'golden spike' between my James Joyce pages and the rest of my website (dealing with AI, web design, etc). In particular it builds in a Joycean direction on my etext-hackers' operating system, DecentOS.
The thread by which this connection hangs is Joyce's central image of The Letter, which can represent any document or file that an operating system may need to deal with.
In Finnegans Wake the letter is (approximately) dictated [qv] by ALP-the-wife [qv] to her son Shem-the-scribe [qv], and delivered by Shem's brother Shaun-the-post(man) [qv] to the king (whoever that may be-- no doubt HCE himself), in an attempt to exonerate [qv] her husband HCE [qv] from the accusations that have plagued him [qv] since he encountered the Cad in the Park [qv]...
For Joyce it was all letters, and all books (especially Ulysses and FW itself), so it's pretty certain it would also include all emails, webpages, usenet postings, etc.
Joyce saw more deeply than most OS designers in recognising that all documents may have an author, a scribe, an intended recipient, and a delivery system that may not be reliable. (These are classic metadata categories.) [more]
WakeOS should also distinguish carefully between private and public communications-- eg, drafts are written locally before being posted to the Web, and WakeOS might remind the poster to proofread for embarrassing errors before publication. (HCE's famous stutter that betrays him to the Cad is an example of experimental communication that would have been safe in private but can be dangerous in public.)
Joyce's dictum in Ulysses that errors are 'portals of discovery' could also shape the handling of errors! Instead of encouraging the psychological ego-process of denial it could encourage authors to respect errors, and annotate/log them in a non-judgmental way that makes them easy to contemplate.
Joyce also explored the motif of encounters between people of varying status (the Cad with HCE being the prototype again), which will be necessary if WakeOS is to deal with such encounters in the virtual world.
One of the most striking characteristics of The Letter is that it's discovered by a hen in a middenheap, apparently having been used as toiletpaper, and punctured by holes attributed to a fork. [qv] No one knows what Joyce intended by this, but at least it's a vivid reminder of the importance of regular backups!
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Portrait:
etext: 1 2 3 4 5a 5b; main :
ch1 notes :
friends :
Pinamonti :
Stephen Hero :
symmetry :
prices
Ulysses:
chapters:
summary :
anchors :
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12a
12b
13
14a
14b
15a
15b
15c
15d
16a
16b
17a
17b
18a
18b
notes:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
reference:
Bloom :
clocktime :
prices :
schemata :
Tower :
riddles :
errors :
Homeric parallels :
[B-L Odyssey] :
Eolus tropes :
parable :
Oxen :
Circe :
1904 :
Thom's :
Gold Cup :
Seaside Girls :
M'appari :
acatalectic :
search
riddles:
overview :
Rudy :
condom :
Gerty :
Hades :
Strand :
murder :
Eccles
maps:
Ulysses :
WRocks :
Strand :
VR tour :
aerial tour :
Dublin :
Leinster :
Ireland :
Europe
editing:
etexts :
lapses :
Gabler :
capitals :
commas :
compounds :
deletes :
punct :
typists
drafts:
prequel :
Proteus :
Cyclops :
Circe
closereadings:
notes :
Oxen :
Circe
Joyce:
main :
fast portal :
portal
major: FW :
Pomes :
U :
PoA :
Ex :
Dub :
SH :
CM :
CM05 :
CM04
minor:
Burner :
[Defoe] :
[Office] :
PoA04 :
Epiph :
Mang :
Rab
bio:
timeline :
1898-1904 :
[Trieste] :
eyesight :
schools :
Augusta
vocation:
reading :
tastes :
publishers :
craft :
symmetry
people:
1898-1904 gossip :
1881 gossip :
Nora :
Lucia :
Gogarty :
Byrne :
friends :
siblings :
Stannie
maps:
Dublin :
Leinster :
Ireland :
Europe :
Paris :
Ulysses
images:
directory :
[Ruch]
motifs:
ontology :
waves :
lies :
wanking :
MonaLisa :
murder
Irish lit:
timeline :
100poems :
Ireland :
newspapers :
gossip :
Yeats :
MaudG :
AE :
the Household :
Theosophy :
Eglinton :
Ideals
classics:
Shakespeare :
Dante :
Pre-Raphaelites :
Homer :
Patrick
industry:
Bloomsday :
[movies] :
Ellmann :
Rose :
genetics :
NewGame
website: account :
theory :
early :
old links :
slow-portal
fast-portal
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