The Value of Plurality in ‘The Network with a Thousand Entrances’

Abstract

This contribution reflects on the value of plurality in the ‘network with a thousand entrances’ suggested by McCarty ( http://goo.gl/H3HAfs ), and others, in association with approaching time-honoured annotative and commentary practices of much-engaged texts. The question is how this approach aligns with tensions, today, surrounding the multiplicity of endeavour associated with modeling practices of annotation by practitioners of the digital humanities. Our work, hence, surveys annotative practice across its reflection in contemporary praxis, from the MIT annotation studio whitepaper ( http://goo.gl/8NBdnf ) through the work of the Open Annotation Collaboration ( http://www.openannotation.org ), and manifest in multiple tools facilitating annotation across the web up to and including widespread application in social knowledge creation suites like Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web annotation )