HYPERTEXT AND HYPERTENSION - POSTSTRUCTURALIST CRITICAL-THEORY, SOCIAL-STUDIES OF SCIENCE AND SOFTWARE

Hypertext - advanced software for organizing information according to webs of conceptual, rather than symbolic, links - has recently provoke d humanists to reconsider post-structuralist semiotic concepts. Debate s about the design and uses of hypertext, among both software develope rs and humanists, reflect a conflict between two problematic views of text: as a medium for social interaction, and as a replication of a co gnitive structure. Post-structuralist critical theory (PSCT), in chall enging concepts of authorship and univocal meaning, argued that semiot ic products were more closely connected to each other than to 'reality , or to their 'original' producers. PSCT's notion of 'intertextuality' captured this hyperactive, social aspect of language products. Theori es of social construction of scientific knowledge (SCSK), I argue, hav e crucially relied upon similar, essentially semiotic concepts such as inscription devices, discourse repertoires and the textualization of heterogeneous resources. As SCSK's practitioners have articulated thei r programme, they have covertly imported cognitive abilities into oste nsibly social processes, creating a kind of theoretical hypertension w hich surfaces in the similar debates over hypertext. Questions about t he status of artificial intelligence, which concerns the capacity of a purely symbolic/syntactic structure - a hyper text - to perform as a social actor sharply expose the tension between cognitive and social t hat underlies many of SCSK's key concepts.