https://urkesh.org / RECORD / UGR / reading-writing

The Urkesh Global Record (Version 1, Beta release)

I. Theory. Browser edition: uses

Reading and writing a website

Giorgio Buccellati – December 2025

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Introduction

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Reading a standard website

We have become used to reading a website as we would a printed text: we scroll a (digital) page as we would turn a (paper) page, and we follow hyperlinks the way we would go to a separate section in a book containing illustrations or additional textual material. But we have no sense of the whole within which we “navigate,” a whole that extends well beyond the limits of the website itself.

query presupposes whole

Similarly, writing a standard website does not

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Reading a digital book

compare above Digital Book

Building on this, we may look at what is entailed in the act of reading as the confrontation with an interplanar system. The challenge is multiple:

  1. The whole(s). – It is critical to have a sense of the single digital book as a whole, and where several digital books are integrated into an overall system, to have a sense of the individual wholes and how they relate to the larger shole. This is perhaps the most difficult moment in the entite process, for two reasons: (a) this is not the rule in current websites, which expect instead the reader to focus exclusively on the immediate; and (b) there are, as a consequence, no procedures to make it possible for the reader to develop such an awareness for the whole. We will show below how this is essential to a proper reading of the website, and how it can be implemented in practice
    awareness (of overall argument and of parallel planes) remains with the reader during the whole process
  2. The interplanar dimension. –
  3. Narrative. – the narrative style as the channel for “reading”
  4. Inspectional reading. – Adler; see two narratives narrative, discursive narrative
  5. Critical reading. – deep reading, Wolf
  6. Access to detail. –

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The audientce

reading is open to all who access the websites on the world wide web,

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Writing a digital book

Writing is a restricted event, and it proceeds in both directions at the same time.

  1. A perception of the whole(s) while working on the parts. –
  2. Full control of the details. –
  3. Adherence to the grammar. –

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The authors

staff

others who want to apply the system

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