Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 107.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 06:52:25 +0100
From: lachance@chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance)
Subject: hypertext and cooking
Willard,
I wonder if in your review of the literature on and about hypertext you
have encountered cookery metaphors.
I ask because this excerpt from Julia Child echoes some of the concerns
raised recently through the postings to Humanist subscribers. For those
who prefer analogies other than the culinary, they may think in general
terms of textbooks. Ms. Child writes :
<cite>
But what a problem for cookery bookery writers. How are we to know the
extent of our reader's experience? I, for one, have solved that riddle by
deciding to tell all. And I hope by the clever use of headings in the main
text such as "For the sauce veloute," "Beating the egg whites,"
"Clarifying the stock," and so forth, that the experienced cook will know
where to skip along fast through the verbiage. But the full explanations
are there for those who need them.
</cite>
Julia Child
_From Julia Child's Kitchen_
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975
x-xi
It is also evident that Ms. Child's experience with episodic delivery
is akin to the lecture series. Her use of such cultural capital is worthy
of emulation. She offers alternative ways of exploiting one's performances
: " Where _The French Chef Cookbook_ takes all the recipes for the
black-and-white shows and sets them forth as they were shown on the air,
inorder and without further comment, this book pulls the new color shows
apart and sets their subject matter into categories: soups, fish, meats,
and so forth. (But it lists the shows and cross references them in the
Appendix, thus making their recipes immediately accessible.)"
Some one in the publishing world had an eye to releasing a set of video
tapes keyed to the book.
Has any one working on the archeology of multimedia explored such
precursors?
-- Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance 20th : Machine Age :: 21st : Era of Reparation
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