Cirrus@Austlit

"The allegorical figuration of the traumatic irruption of the Real seems to lie at the heart of ..., >di][e][lation manifesto-:-a sliver of the future f][br][eeder< . Here the mouse click serves to destabilize the interactor. ... Web navigation usually proceeds from the interactor's recognition of a significant "button," ... But the visual clues, made up either of garbled word chunks or opaque code-like punctuation series, are barely clues at all. Once the interactor does click on the right buttons, however, popup windows appear. And here is where the traumatic irruption of History seems to be figured: what we get when we click on a button is either a scrollable mini-window containing more disjointed text OR a popup window containing a Flash movie, each one featuring some new alien creature who comes closer and closer to our faces,...The question of who exactly the future feeder/breeders will be now becomes disturbingly indeterminate and alien. A manifesto normally claims to clarify the issues of the future; this wo/manifesto instead gives birth to some future rough beast."

Source: Body Info Web: The Internet Poetry of Mez. by George Hartley, paper presented @ the Modern Language Association International Convention, New Orleans, Louisiana, December 28, 2001.