Journal articles on the topic 'Multilinearity'

This paper addresses three paradigms in epistemological structures that could serve as preliminary classifications enabling a systematic approach to past and current media phenomena such as hypertext, diagrams and ubiquitous computing. Nonlinearity is discussed by Vilém Flusser in the context of "technical images." In his own approach to go beyond linear text, Flusser and his publisher created a digital version of his book Die Schrift on a floppy disk (1987), enabling the reader to jump between chapters or to rewrite the text. Multilinearity is a concept that is revived within the diagrammatology discourse, transcending linearity through topographical ways of reading. Current examples can be found in arts and narratives such as Chris Ware's comics, who uses diagrammatics to blur the lines between the reader and the author. Simultaneity as a technological attribute is essential to current ubiquitous and pervasive technologies and services and draws heavily on Heideggerian concepts such as readiness-to-hand and background. In this epistemological shift, the information is instantaneously organized according to the user's needs. Each of these epistemological structures offers a different idea about receiving and creating knowledge, information and communication, paving the way for narrative and media strategies that are more and more determined by a 'reader' becoming a 'user' and a 'text' becoming a 'service.' Image Credit: Chris Ware’s Diagram on the interior of the dust-jacket from Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth.

A robust scheme to estimate a set of models for a linear time-invariant system, subject to perturbations in the physical parameters, from a frequency response data record is proposed. The true model as well as the disturbances affecting the system are assumed unknown. However, the physical parameters are assumed to enter the coefficients of the system transfer function multilinearly. A set of models is identified by perturbing the physical parameters one-at-time and using a frequency domain identification technique. Exploiting the assumed multilinearity, the estimated set of models is validated. The proposed scheme is evaluated on a number of simulated systems, and on a physical robot manipulator arm.

The notion of a tensor captures three great ideas: equivariance, multilinearity, separability. But trying to be three things at once makes the notion difficult to understand. We will explain tensors in an accessible and elementary way through the lens of linear algebra and numerical linear algebra, elucidated with examples from computational and applied mathematics.

This article offers comparative close readings of two digital fictions that feature various types and degrees of unintentional unreliable narration. Its prime focus lies on the affordances and restraints provided by hypertextual, multilinear, multimodal, interactive and ludic new media with respect to the aesthetic representation and textual embedding of unreliability. To this end, I have chosen narratives from two ‘generations’ of digital fiction – a hyperfiction par excellence, and a hypermedia narrative, both of which are multilinear by definition yet deal with the ideas of closure and narrative framing in very different ways. In particular, I shall examine how unintentional, psycho-pathological unreliability in the sense of Riggan’s (1981; cf. Heyd, 2006; Jahn, 1998) ‘madman’ are represented in afternoon, a story (Joyce, 1987) and the German hypermedia novel Quadrego (Maskiewicz, 2001). My comparative analysis shows how manifestations of deviant yet not devious, in the sense of quietly deceptive narration, are aesthetically enriched by techniques afforded by the digital medium, such as hypertextual multilinearity, lack of or partial closure, multisensory experience, fluid transitions and boundaries and, most significantly, the play with reader agency, which may – in cases of radical multilinearity – even lead to readerly unreliability.

In this paper, the Abaqus model of an 8 layer isolation structure is established, and the connector element provided in the software is used to simulate the stiffness multilinearity in the horizontal and vertical direction of the isolation bearing. In the numerical analysis, six kinds of working conditions are set up to compare the vertical displacement, the peak acceleration and the interlayer displacement etc, and the effect of bearing failure on the superstructure is obtained.

First, we present the types of discourse units most commonly used for the linguistic description of sign languages (beyond specific terminologies): lexical signs, classifier constructions and role shifts in particular. Then, after having briefly outlined our theoretical approach, the Semiological approach, we report on the types of units proposed by this approach, namely, in addition to pointing units and fingerspellling units, these two main types, lexical units and transfer units. This finally allows us to explain, from detailed examples, the types of difficulties we encounter in our ELAN annotations, which are linked in particular to the basic principle of a gloss-based notation. These examples, representative of our French Sign Language (LSF) corpora, are problematic because of the interweaving of unit types, their multilinearity and the complexity of discursive constructions. These difficulties attest to the need for a means of annotating relevant elements at an infra-unit level.

The article deals with the evaluation of the political institutions in early medievalCentral Asia. The existing approaches to defining the governing systems of the imperial nomad unions focus on the concepts "chiefdom" and "state", but in both cases researchers have to state an absence of total compliance of the nomadic empires' governing structures to the classical attributes of chiefdom and state, thus constantly making reservations, which blur these concepts. The purpose of the work is to consider the possibility of solving this problem by using a broader "net" of terms determining different political systems and stages in their development in relation to early medieval nomadic empires. The methodological base of the article is the modern conceptions of multilinearity and diversity of the political genesis. The research has resulted in determination of a range of concepts which could better reflect the specificity of political institutions of different nomadic empires or make this evaluation more neutral but providing a clearer understanding of the complexity level of the political organization.

As societal interaction and combination play a vital role in shaping spatio-temporal development paths, meta-theories of uneven development should give way to a relational meta-theory of uneven and combined development (U&CD). U&CD examines at multiple levels of abstraction not just internal causal mechanisms governing the trajectories of individual societies but also causal mechanisms deriving from societal interaction in a world of multiple unevenly developed societies and multiple development pathways. As a consequence it helps explain geographical differentiation and the multiplicity, hybridity and multilinearity of processes of development. As U&CD examines the roles of ideal and efficient causes and causal laws, it also entails revitalized social science and political economy approaches in geography and urban and regional development studies. To demonstrate the indispensability of analyses of the role of societal interaction and the explanatory significance of the theory of U&CD, a series of longue-durée vignettes explore their role in explanations of the spatio-temporality of the decline and subsequent return of China in a changing and interdependent world.

AbstractDebates over ‘modernity’ have been central to the development of historical-sociological approaches to International Relations (IR). Within the bourgeoning subfield of International Historical Sociology (IHS), much work has been done to formulate a historically dynamic conception of international relations, which is then used to undermine unilinear conceptions of global modernity. Nevertheless, this article argues that IHS has not proceeded far enough in successfully remedying the problem of unilinearism. The problem remains that historical narratives, informed by IHS, tend to transhistoricise capitalism, which, in turn, obscures the generative nature of international relations, as well as the fundamental heterogeneity of diverging paths to modernity both within and beyond western Europe. Based on the theory of Uneven and Combined Development, Political Marxism, and Robbie Shilliam’s discussion of ‘Jacobinism’, this article first reinterprets the radical multilinearity of modernity within western Europe, and then utilises this reinterpretation to provide a new reading of the Ottoman path to modernity (1839–1918). Such a historical critique and reconstruction will highlight the significance of Jacobinism for a more accurate theorisation of the origin and development of the modern international order, hence contributing to a deeper understanding of the international relations of modernity.

In the present article, the adsorbent prepared from laterite with lanthanum and cerium oxides (La2O3-CeO2/laterite (LCL)) was efficiently employed for the removal of arsenite and fluoride from an aqueous environment. The obtained materials were characterized by XRD, SEM, and nitrogen adsorption/desorption. The synthesized LCL exhibited a high adsorption capacity towards arsenite (As(III)) and fluoride. The adsorption of both analytes on LCL, which was well-fitted to a pseudo-second-order equation, was found to be kinetically fast in the first 20 minutes and reached equilibrium at around 180 minutes. Weber’s intraparticle diffusion model in multilinearity using the piecewise linear regression combined with Akaike’s criteria was addressed. The adsorption capacities of LCL calculated from Langmuir’s isotherm model were found to be 67.08 mg·g-1 for arsenite and 58.02 mg·g-1 for fluoride. Thermodynamic parameters presented an endothermic nature of arsenite adsorption but an exothermic nature for fluoride and a negative Gibbs free energy for the spontaneous process of arsenite or fluoride adsorption at the studied temperature range. The excellent adsorption performance and stability make the composite of laterite and La-Ce binary oxides an alternative efficient and cheap adsorbent for the removal of arsenite and fluoride in an aqueous solution.

The generation of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic and garden waste must be recycled to support the circular economy. An alternative way to reduce the plastics waste is to reduce this waste by converting it into energy such as Refused Derived Fuel (RDF) as an alternative for processing waste. Substitution of plastic and garden waste is an opportunity to be analyzed. Hence, This study aimed to investigate the potential for converting material substitution from PET and garden waste into RDF. The RDF characterized test method was carried out by proximate, water content, ash content, and analysis. At the same time, the calorific value. was tested by bomb calorimetry. Substitution of the mixture of plastic and garden waste affects each parameter of RDF pellet quality including water, ash, and caloric value (sig.< 0.05). The increase of plastic waste in pellets consistently increases the calorific value of RDF from 18.94 until 25.04 MJ/kg. The RDF pellet water and ash content also invariably affect the rate of increase in the calorific value of RDF in the multilinearity model (sig.<0.05; R2 is 0.935). The thermal stability of the pellets occurred at a temperature of 5000C decomposition of hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin in mixed garden waste with plastic in RDF pellets. The decrease in the decomposition of PET into terephthalic acid monomer from the thermal stability of raw materials and waste PET plastic pellets occurs at a temperature of 4500˚C. This potential finding can be used as a basis for consideration in regions or countries that have the generation of garden waste and plastic, especially the type of PET to be used as an environmentally friendly fuel.

The scientific article deals with analyzing hypertextuality as a characteristic featureof the modern English dictionary Internet discourse. It highlights the prerequisites of hypertextuality and its importance in modern linguistics, in particular in the aspect of e-dictionary compilation. It determines the idea of the concept and outlines the approaches to its interpretation. Moreover, the research analysis theapproaches to define hypertext. In addition, it focuses on its distinctive characteristics. They include non-hierarchy, cohesive closedness, nonlinearity, potentiality, multimedia, multilinearity, openness, heterogeneity, and multiplicity of virtual structures. The article considers the types of hypertext systems (bibliographic, analytical, reference, experimental). It establishes that such advantages of hypertext as adaptability, the possibility of fast publicity and distribution, and economy determine the superiority of virtual text over the traditional one. The investigation studies the typology of hypertexts (dynamic, statistical, hierarchical, grid). It outlines the importance of hypertextuality in electronic dictionary compilation. It emphasizes the significance of hypertext technologies to systematize information effectively based on solid internal connections, both text, and illustrations, graphics, photographs, drawings, audio, and video, which help readers better understand information. The articleproves that in developing a global structure of relationships between information blocks, it is necessary to consider possible connections both within the electronic dictionary and with external information resources. It characterizes the types of hyperlinks (local, global) and considers their role in a dictionary entry. Finally, it proves that an electronic dictionary is essentially hypertext. After all, the hypertext system of electronic dictionaries allows effective presentation of material in a combination of text, tables, graphs, diagrams, illustrations, animations, audio, and video materials, as well as the use of information modeling and navigation. The prospect of further scientific research lies in the detailed analysis of dictionary entry distinctive features.

<p>The most numerous and malicious types of pathogens fungal diseases of plants cultural cereals – <em>Triticum аestivum </em><em>L</em><em>.</em>, <em>Secale cereale</em> <em>L</em><em>.</em> та <em>Triticum trispecies Shulind.</em> in conditions of anthropical ecosystem Central Right-bank Forest-Steppe are <em>Microdochium nivale (Fr.)</em>, <em>Blumeria graminis (DC.) f. sp. tritici Speer</em>, <em>Puccinia recondita Rob. ex. Desm f. sp. tritici</em> та <em>Tillitia caries (Tul.), Tillitia secalis (Korda, Kuhn) </em>etc.,<em> </em>manifestation of parasitism depends on genotypical, phenotypical, ontogenetical peculiarities plants, growing conditions. According to the results of years of research (2007–2016) highlighted group of plant formsthat are characterized by mono-, two- and polyfacet of resistance epiphytoparasites. That peculiarity owning heterogeneous or multilinearity plant forms (Аriivkа, Yuvivata 60, КС 1, Л 3-95, Л 4639/96), formed as a result of hybridization and repeated bekrossing and selected from hybrid populations by means individual and mass selections. The mechanism of plant genetic heterogeneity of the aforementioned forms due to the presence of multivariate phenetical markers – components of the spectra gliadin proteins (6А1, 6А4, 6В1, 6В3 etc.), as well as the phenotypical and ontogenetical their homogeneity, which increases the resistance of plant populations to adverse biotic stress environment. Among the studied assortment varietal plants tribe <em>Triticeae</em>, medium higher stability of some of them to the spectrum specified above epiphytoparasites caused by their variety individuals, which, mass and individual selection as a result of the reproduction, give rise to whole families – point populations (manifesting different firmness to one and the same species and races of pathogens, including with progressive race creative process), that is the basis of formed varieties – as megapopulation. Adaptive mechanisms of plant populations cultural crops to adverse biotic stress, particularly damaging pathogens are a number of biological peculiarities (molecular genetics, physiological, biochemical, morphological, ontogenetic, biocenotic), identification of plants which reflects the degree of their adaptive ability, ecological plasticity and sustainability. In general, the mechanisms resistance of plant tribe <em>Triticeae</em> to epiphytoparasites can distinguish by the following types: functional stability (sustainability, is caused by peculiarities of functional parameters of the plant), morphological tolerance (the ability of plants to resist damage without reducing productivity), ontogenetic evasion (sustainability, is caused by peculiarities ontogenetic of development of plants), photoperiodic sensitivity (retarded the development in autumn and late spring vegetation) and genetic heterogeneity (the presence of morphologically identical homozygous of lines differing by the spectrum of component proteins gliadin). Plant forms that possess mono- and polyfacet resistance to epiphytoparasites avoid parasite influence of fungi due to the mechanism ontogenetic evasion (Slavetne, Chaian, Vіvаtе Nоsіvskе, Pshenychne, Prydesnyanska n/k, Zoriana Nosivska etc.). The manifestations of mechanisms morphological tolerance of plant populations (Noshpа 100, Л 41/95, Bоrоtba, Slavetne) are medium- and high stem, woolly of eaves, stems, waxy coating, high index leaf, half procumbent and half vertical bush form, awned spike, glossy surface and gray color of leaves, stems.</p>

An order, family and genus are validated, seven new genera, 35 new species, two new combinations, two epitypes, two lectotypes, and 17 interesting new host and / or geographical records are introduced in this study. Validated order, family and genus: Superstratomycetales and Superstratomycetaceae (based on Superstratomyces). New genera: Haudseptoria (based on Haudseptoria typhae); Hogelandia (based on Hogelandia lambearum); Neoscirrhia (based on Neoscirrhia osmundae); Nothoanungitopsis (based on Nothoanungitopsis urophyllae); Nothomicrosphaeropsis (based on Nothomicrosphaeropsis welwitschiae); Populomyces (based on Populomyces zwinianus); Pseudoacrospermum (based on Pseudoacrospermum goniomae). New species: Apiospora sasae on dead culms of Sasa veitchii (Netherlands); Apiospora stipae on dead culms of Stipa gigantea (Spain); Bagadiella eucalyptorum on leaves of Eucalyptus sp . (Australia); Calonectria singaporensis from submerged leaf litter (Singapore); Castanediella neomalaysiana on leaves of Eucalyptus sp. (Malaysia); Colletotrichum pleopeltidis on leaves of Pleopeltis sp. (South Africa); Coniochaeta deborreae from soil (Netherlands); Diaporthe durionigena on branches of Durio zibethinus (Vietnam); Floricola juncicola on dead culm of Juncus sp. (France); Haudseptoria typhae on leaf sheath of Typha sp. (Germany); Hogelandia lambearum from soil (Netherlands); Lomentospora valparaisensis from soil (Chile); Neofusicoccum mystacidii on dead stems of Mystacidium capense (South Africa); Neomycosphaerella guibourtiae on leaves of Guibourtia sp. (Angola); Niesslia neoexosporioides on dead leaves of Carex paniculata (Germany); Nothoanungitopsis urophyllae on seed capsules of Eucalyptus urophylla (South Africa); Nothomicrosphaeropsis welwitschiae on dead leaves of Welwitschia mirabilis (Namibia); Paracremonium bendijkiorum from soil (Netherlands); Paraphoma ledniceana on dead wood of Buxus sempervirens (Czech Republic); Paraphoma salicis on leaves of Salix cf. alba (Ukraine); Parasarocladium wereldwijsianum from soil (Netherlands); Peziza ligni on masonry and plastering (France); Phyllosticta phoenicis on leaves of Phoenix reclinata (South Africa); Plectosphaerella slobbergiarum from soil (Netherlands); Populomyces zwinianus from soil (Netherlands); Pseudoacrospermum goniomae on leaves of Gonioma kamassi (South Africa); Pseudopyricularia festucae on leaves of Festuca californica (USA); Sarocladium sasijaorum from soil (Netherlands); Sporothrix hypoxyli in sporocarp of Hypoxylon petriniae on Fraxinus wood (Netherlands); Superstratomyces albomucosus on Pycnanthus angolensis (Netherlands); Superstratomyces atroviridis on Pinus sylvestris (Netherlands); Superstratomyces flavomucosus on leaf of Hakea multilinearis (Australia); Superstratomyces tardicrescens from human eye specimen (USA); Taeniolella platani on twig of Platanus hispanica (Germany), and Tympanis pini on twigs of Pinus sylvestris (Spain).

AbstractThis article is devoted to establishing two-weight estimates for commutators of singular integrals. We combine multilinearity with product spaces. A new type of two-weight extrapolation result is used to yield the quasi-Banach range of estimates.

Ethnography may have a unique capacity to capture the attention of non-academic publics, but if it remains tied to conventional publication and dissemination strategies, this capacity will remain unrealized. This article examines the possibilities and challenges of appropriating digital storytelling for public ethnography. To do so, we consider how two key features of digital storytelling platforms—multimodality and multilinearity—can help ethnographers make public ethnography. We show how these features can be used by ethnographers to publicize and politicize ethnographic accounts and translate descriptive and theory-driven ethnography for non-traditional audiences. Making effective use of multimodality and multilinearity has practical and epistemological implications. Appropriating digital storytelling for public ethnography recasts how ethnographers use theory, create and configure ethnographic data, deploy interpretive and evaluative schema, and structure accounts. Though challenging and potentially risky, we contend that if ethnographers want to make a difference, they should experiment with making ethnography differently.

This paper explored the data collected regarding the study on mediating effect of organizational innovation in the relationship between leadership practices and organisational performance. Seventy universities operating in Saudi Arabia participated in the study. The survey was completed by 248 principal officers on behalf of their respective universities. The results were then analysed using version 22 of the software package of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). An initial data testing and preliminary review were conducted to ensure that the multivariate analysis assumptions were not broken. The analysis was carried out in this study explicitly with the missing values, outliers, regular test and multilinearity testing. We concluded that the data were sufficient for further study.

The problem of the sense-production accompanies us throughout history and intensifies with each new technological paradigm. When we think of webdocumentaries (or webdocs), the universe of sense-production involves some typical concepts of digital writing that deserve to be rethought, such as interactivity, linearity, multilinearity and the very concept of narrative. From the analysis of 109 webdocumentaries made over two decades (2002-2020), which remain online, it was possible to verify an overlap between the formatting of the main webdocs production software and the standardization of the narrative structure as a reflection of the argorithmic configuration of each one of them. Flash and HTML (dominant during the first decade), Korsakow, HTML5, Klynt, RacontR, acted, each in its own way, according to the results obtained, decisively in the organization of contents, navigability, usability, hypertextuality and interactivity.

In many real-world systems, strategic agents' decisions can be understood as complex - i.e., consisting of multiple sub-decisions - and hence can give rise to an exponential number of pure strategies. Examples include network congestion games, simultaneous auctions, and security games. However, agents' sets of strategies are often structured, allowing them to be represented compactly. There currently exists no general modeling language that captures a wide range of commonly seen strategy structure and utility structure. We propose Resource Graph Games (RGGs), the first general compact representation for games with structured strategy spaces, which is able to represent a wide range of games studied in literature. We leverage recent results about multilinearity, a key property of games that allows us to represent the mixed strategies compactly, and, as a result, to compute various equilibrium concepts efficiently. While not all RGGs are multilinear, we provide a general method of converting RGGs to those that are multilinear, and identify subclasses of RGGs whose converted version allow efficient computation.

Abstract The occurrence of organic micropollutants such as pharmaceutical drugs and hormones in the environment reflects the inefficiency of traditional wastewater treatment technologies. Biosorption is a promising alternative from a technical-economic point of view, so understanding the mechanisms of adsorption in new biosorbents is vital for application and process optimization. Within this context, this study aims to evaluate the mechanisms of adsorption and removal of synthetic and natural hormones by Pinus elliottii bark biosorbent (PS) compared to commercial granular activated carbon (GAC) through kinetic models, isotherm models, and thermodynamic models. The adsorbents were also characterized by morphology, chemical composition, functional groups, and point of zero charge. Characterization of the adsorbents highlights the heterogeneous and fibrous morphology and broader range of functional groups found for PS. Kinetic adjustments showed high accuracy for pseudo-second-order, Elovich, and intraparticle diffusion models, presenting multilinearity and evidencing multi-stage adsorption. The isotherms for PS followed high-affinity models, predominantly chemisorption, while those for GAC followed the Langmuir model, where physisorption predominates. These mechanisms were confirmed by thermodynamic models, which also indicated a higher dependence on temperature in the adsorption process. In the fortified water removal test, PS showed removal values higher than GAC, highlighting the advantages of this adsorbent.

In this study a Jordanian Zeolite was modified using anionic surfactant which is sodium dodecyl sulfate (sodium dodecyl sulfate). The sorption of Pb(II) from synthetic wastewater by surfactant modified Zeolite (SMZ) was investigated as a function of temperature. The experimental data was analysed using isotherm models namely Langmuir, Freundlich, Redlich-Peterson and Temkin and kinetic models such as the pseudo- second-order, intraparticle diffusion and the Elovich models in order to understand the mechanism of the interaction between this SMZ and the lead ions. All the isotherm models showed good correlation with the experimental results but Freundlich was the best. The calculated DH was obtained using Langmuir constant (aL), its value of 8.29kJ/mol revealed that the type of sorption is physical oneThe values of RL at all temperatures reflect the favorability of this interaction. The calculated activation energy was 21.126 kJ/mol using the pseudo-second order constant (k2), which indicates that the sorption is physisorption. The intraparticle diffusion model showed multilinearity which means multiple stages there occurred to achieve the removal of lead ions, the first linear curve is due to the boundary layer diffusion and the second linear curve isfor the intraparticle diffusion effect. The adsorption kinetics data fitted also Elovich model.

We search and classify two-component versions of the quad equations in the ABS list, under certain assumptions. The independent variables will be called $y,z$ and in addition to multilinearity and irreducibility the equation pair is required to have the following specific properties: (1) The two equations forming the pair are related by $y\leftrightarrow z$ exchange. (2) When $z=y$ both equations reduce to one of the equations in the ABS list. (3) Evolution in any corner direction is by a multilinear equation pair. One straightforward way to construct such two-component pairs is by taking some particular equation in the ABS list (in terms of $y$), using replacement $y \leftrightarrow z$ for some particular shifts, after which the other equation of the pair is obtained by property (1). This way we can get 8 pairs for each starting equation. One of our main results is that due to condition (3) this is in fact complete for H1, H3, Q1, Q3. (For H2 we have a further case, Q2, Q4 we did not check.) As for the CAC integrability test, for each choice of the bottom equations we could in principle have $8^2$ possible side-equations. However, we find that only equations constructed with an even number of $y \leftrightarrow z$ replacements are possible, and for each such equation there are two sets of "side" equation pairs that produce (the same) genuine B\"acklund transformation and Lax pair.

"Interactivity implies two agencies in conversation, playfully and spontaneously developing a mutual discourse" -- Sandy Stone (11) I. On Interactivity The difference between interactivity as it is performed across the page and the screen, maintains Sandy Stone, is that virtual texts and virtual communities can embody a play ethic (14). Inserted like a mutation into the corporate genome, play ruptures the encyclopaedic desire to follow seamless links to a buried 'meaning' and draws us back to the surface, back into real-time conversation with the machine. Hypertext theorists see this as a tactic of resistance to homogenisation. As we move across a hypertextual reading space, we produce the text in this unfolding now, choosing pathways which form a map in the space of our own memories: where we have been, where we are, where we might yet be. Play is occupying oneself with diversions. II. Space, Time and Composition Reading in time, we create the text in the space of our own memories. Hypertext theorists maintain that the choices we make around every corner, the spontaneity and contingency involved in these choices, are the bringing into being of a (constantly replaced) electronic palimpsest, a virtual geography. The dislocation which occurs as we engage in nodal leaps draws us back to the surface, rupturing our experience of the narrative and bringing us into a blissful experience of possibility. III. War against the Line There is the danger, on the one hand, of being subsumed by the passive subject position demanded by infotainment culture and the desire it encourages to seek the satisfaction of closure by following seamless links to a buried 'meaning'. On the other hand, we risk losing efficiency and control over the unfolding interaction by entering into an exchange which disorientates us with infinite potential. We cannot wildly destratify. The questions we ask must seek to keep the conversation open. In order to establish a new discursive territory within which to understand this relationship, we should view the interface not simply as a transparency which enables interaction with the machine as 'other', but as a text, a finely-wrought behavioural map which "exists at the intersection of political and ideological boundary lands" (Selfe & Selfe 1). As we write, so are we written by the linguistic contact zones of this terrain. Hypertext is thus a process involving the active translation of modes of being into possible becomings across the interface. The geographic 'space' we translate into a hypertext "is imaginational... . We momentarily extend the linear reading act into a third dimension when we travel a link" (Tolva 4). A literal spatial representation would break from the realm of hypertext and become a virtual reality. Thus, the geographic aspect is not inherent to the system itself but is partially translated into the geometry of the medium via our experience and perception (the 'map'), a process describing our 'line of flight' as we evolve in space. Directional flows between time and its traditional subordination to space in representation implode across the present-tense of the screen and time literally surfaces. Our experience of the constantly-replaced electronic palimpsest is one of temporal surrender: "we give in to time, we give way to time, we give in with time"(Joyce 219). In other words, the subject of hypertext subverts the traditional hierarchy and writes for space, producing the 'terrain' in the unfolding now in the Deleuzian sense, not in space as desired by the State. Johnson-Eilola aligns the experience of hypertext with the Deleuzian War Machine, a way of describing the speed and range of virtual movement created when the animal body splices into the realm of technology and opens an active plane of conflict.. The War Machine was invented by the nomads -- it operates by continual deterritorialisation in a tension-limit with State science, what we might call the command-control drive associated with geometric, dynamic thought and the sedentary culture of the Line. It "exemplifies" the avant-garde mentality that hypertext theorists have been associating with the electronic writing space (Moulthrop, "No War Machine" 1). Playing outside. The State desires an end to the resistance to totalisation promulgated by contingent thought and its thermodynamic relationship to space: the speed which assumes a probabilistic, vortical motion, actually drawing smooth space itself. The war machine is thus an open system opposed to classical mechanics via its grounding in active contingencies and spatio-temporal production. The nomad reads and writes for space, creating the temporal text in the space of her own memory, giving way to time and allowing existent points to lapse before the trajectory of flight. Nomad thought is not dependent on any given theory of relationship with the medium, but works via disruption and (re)distribution, the gaps, stutterings and gasp-like expressions experienced when we enter into conversation with the hypertext. The danger is that the war machine might be appropriated by the State, at which point this light-speed communication becomes of the utmost importance in the war against space and time. As speed and efficient retrieval replace real-space across the instantaneity and immediacy of the terminal, the present-time sensory faculties of the individual are marginalised as incidental and she becomes "the virtual equivalent of the well-equipped invalid" (Virilio 5). In other words, as the frame of real-space and present-time disappears, the text of the reader/writer becomes "sutured" into the discourse of the State, the only goal to gain "complete speed, to cover territory in order for the State to subdivide and hold it through force, legislation or consent" (Virilio, qtd. in Johnson-Eilola). This is when the predetermined geometry of hypertext becomes explicit. The progressive subsumption (or "suturing") of the multiple, nomadic self into the discourse of the computer occurs when "the terms of the narrative are heightened, as each 'node' in the hypertext points outwards to other nodes [and] readers must compulsively follow links to arrive at the 'promised plenitude' at the other end of the link" (Johnson-Eilola 391). When we no longer reflect on the frame and move towards complete speed and efficiency, when we stop playing on the surface and no longer concern ourselves with diversion, the war machine has been appropriated by the State. In this case, there is no revolutionary 'outside' to confront in interaction, as all has been marshalled towards closure. Keeping the conversation open means continuously reflecting on the frame. We cannot wildly destratify and lose control entirely by moving in perpetual bewilderment, but we can see the incompleteness of the story, recognising the importance of local gaps and spaces. We can work with the idea that the "dyad of smooth/striated represents not a dialectic but a continuum" (Moulthrop, "Rhizome" 317) that can be turned more complex in its course. Contingency and play reside in the intermezzo, the "dangerous edges, fleeting, attempting to write across the boundaries between in-control and out-of-control" (Johnson-Eilola 393). The war machine exists as at once process and product, the translation between smooth-striated moving in potentia: the nomadic consciousness can recognise this process and live flux as reality itself, or consistency. In sum, we avoid subsumption and appropriation by holding open the function of the text as process in our theorising, in our teaching, in our reading and writing across the hypertextual environment. We can either view hypertext as a tool or product which lends itself to efficient, functional use (to organise information, to control and consume in an encyclopaedic fashion), or we can view it as a process which lends itself to nomadic thought and resistance to totalisation in syncopated flows, in cybernetic fits and starts. This is our much-needed rhetoric of activity. IV. An Alternative Story No matter their theoretical articulation, such claims made for hypertext are fundamentally concerned with escaping the logocentric geometry of regulated time and space. Recent explorations deploying the Deleuzian smooth/striated continuum make explicit the fact that the enemy in this literary 'war' has never been the Line or linearity per se, but "the nonlinear perspective of geometry; not the prison-house of time but the fiction of transcendence implied by the indifferent epistemological stance toward time" (Rosenberg 276). Although the rhizome, the war machine, the cyborg and the nomad differ in their particularities and composition, they all explicitly play on the dislocated, time-irreversible processes of chaos theory, thermodynamics and associated 'liberatory' topological perspectives. Rosenberg's essay makes what I consider to be a very disruptive point: hypertext merely simulates the 'smooth', contingent thought seen to be antithetical to regulated space-time and precise causality due to its fundamental investment in a regulated, controlled and (pre)determined geometry. Such a deceptively smooth landscape is technonarcissistic in that its apparent multiplicity actually prescribes to a totality of command-control. Hypertext theorists have borrowed the terms 'multilinear', 'nonlinear' and 'contingency' from physics to articulate hypertext's resistance to the dominant determinist episteme, a framework exemplified by the term 'dynamics', opposing it to "the irreversible laws characteristic of statistical approximations that govern complex events, exemplified by the term, 'thermodynamics'" (Rosenberg 269). This resistance to the time-reversible, non-contingent and totalised worldview has its ideological origins in the work of the avant-garde. Hypertext theorists are fixated with quasi-hypertextual works that were precursors to the more 'explicitly' revolutionary texts in the electronic writing space. In the works of the avant-garde, contingency is associated with creative freedom and subversive, organic logic. It is obsessively celebrated by the likes of Pynchon, Joyce, Duchamp and Cage. Hypertext theorists have reasoned from this that 'nonlinear' or 'multilinear' access to information is isomorphic with such playful freedom and its contingent, associative leaps. Theorists align this nonsequential reasoning with a certain rogue logic: the 'fluid nature of thought itself' exemplified by the explicitly geographic relationship to space-time of the Deleuzian rhizome and the notion of contingent, probabilistic 'becomings'. Hypertext participates fully in the spatio-temporal dialectic of the avant-garde. As Moulthrop observes, the problem with this is that from a topological perspective, 'linear' and 'multilinear' are identical: "lines are still lines, logos and not nomos, even when they are embedded in a hypertextual matrix" ("Rhizome" 310). The spatio-temporal dislocations which enable contingent thought and 'subversive' logic are simply not sustained through the reading/writing experience. Hypertextual links are not only reversible in time and space, but trace a detached path through functional code, each new node comprising a carefully articulated behavioural 'grammar' that the reader adjusts to. To assume that by following 'links' and engaging in disruptive nodal leaps a reader night be resisting the framework of regulated space-time and determinism is "to ignore how, once the dislocation occurs, a normalcy emerges ... as the hypertext reader acclimates to the new geometry or new sequence of lexias" (Rosenberg 283). Moreover, the searchpath maps which earlier theorists had sensed were antithetical to smooth space actually exemplify the element of transcendent control readers have over the text as a whole. "A reader who can freeze the text, a reader who is aware of a Home button, a reader who can gain an instant, transcendent perspective of the reading experience, domesticates contingencies" (Rosenberg 275). The visual and behavioural grammar of hypertext is one of transcendent control and determined response. Lines are still lines -- regulated, causal and not contingent -- even when they are 'constructed' by an empowered reader. Hypertext is thus invested (at least in part) in a framework of regularity, control and precise function. It is inextricably a part of State apparatus. The problem with this is that the War Machine, which best exemplifies the avant-garde's insurgency against sedentary culture, must be exterior to the State apparatus and its regulated grid at all times. "If we acknowledge this line of critique (which I think we must), then we must seriously reconsider any claims about hypertext fiction as War Machine, or indeed as anything en avant" (Moulthrop, "No War Machine" 5). Although hypertext is not revolutionary, it would be the goal of any avant-garde use of hypertext to find a way to sustain the experience of dislocation that would indicate liberation from the hegemony of geometry. I would like to begin to sketch the possibility of 'contingent interaction' through the dislocations inherent to alternative interfaces later in this story. For the time being, however, we must reassess all our liberation claims. If linearity and multilinearity are identical in terms of geometric relations to space-time, "why should they be any different in terms of ideology", asks Moulthrop ("Rhizome" 310). V. On Interactivity Given Rosenberg's critique against any inherently revolutionary qualities, we must acknowledge that hypermedia "marks not a terminus but a transition," Moulthrop writes ("Rhizome" 317). As a medium of exchange it is neither smooth nor striated, sophist nor socratic, 'work' nor 'text': it is undergoing an increasingly complex phase transition between such states. This landscape also gives rise to stray flows and intensities, 'Unspecified Enemies' which exist at the dangerous fissures and edges. We must accept that we will never escape the system, but we are presented with opportunities to rock the sedentary order from within. As a group of emerging electronic artists see it, the dis-articulation of the point'n'click interface is where interaction becomes reflection on the frame in fits and starts. "We believe that the computer, like everything else, is composed in conflict," explain the editors of electronic magazine I/O/D. "If we are locked in with the military and with Disney, they are locked in not just with us, but with every other stray will-to-power" (Fuller, Interview 2). Along with Adelaide-based group Mindflux, these artists produce hypertext interfaces that involve sensory apparatus and navigational skills that have been marginalised as incidental in the disabling interactive technologies of mainstream multimedia. Sound, movement, proprioception, an element of randomness and assorted other sensory circuits become central to the navigational experience. By enlisting marginalised senses, "we are not proposing to formulate a new paradigm of multimedial correctness," stresses Fuller, "but simply exploring the possibility of more complicated feedback arrangements between the user and the machine" (Fuller, qtd. in Barnet 48). The reader must encounter the 'lexias' contained in the system via the stray flows, intensities, movements, stratas and organs that are not proper to the system but shift across the interface and the surface of her body. In Fuller's electronic magazine, the reader is called upon to converse with the technology outside of the domesticated circuits of sight, dislocating the rigorous hierarchy of feedback devices which privilege the sight-machine and disable contingent interaction in a technonarcissistic fashion. The written information is mapped across a 'fuzzy' sound-based interface, sensitive at every moment to the smallest movements of the reader's fingers on the keys and mouse: the screen itself is black, its swarm of links and hotspots dead to the eye. The reader's movements produce different bleeps and beats, each new track opening different entrances and exits through the information in dependence upon the fluctuating pitch and tempo of her music. Without the aid of searchpaths and bright links, she must move in a state of perpetual readjustment to the technology, attuned not to the information stored behind the interface, but to the real-time sounds her movements produce. What we are calling play, Fuller explains, "is the difference between something that has a fixed grammar on the one hand and something that is continually and openly inventing its own logic on the other" (Fuller & Pope 4). The electronic writing space is not inherently liberatory, and the perpetual process of playing with process across the interface works to widen the 'fissures across the imperium' only for a moment. According to Fuller and Joyce, the 'process of playing with process' simply means complicating the feedback arrangements between the user's body and the machine. "We need to find a way of reading sensually ... rather than, as the interactive artist Graham Weinbren puts it, descending 'into the pit of so-called multimedia, with its scenes of unpleasant 'hotspots,' and 'menus' [that] leaves no room for the possibility of a loss of self, of desire in relation to the unfolding'" remarks Joyce (11). Interactivity which calls upon a mind folded everywhere within the body dislocates the encyclopaedic organisation of data that "preserves a point of privilege from where the eye can frame objects" by enlisting itinerant, diffuse desires in an extended period of readjustment to technology (Fuller & Pope 3). There are no pre-ordained or privileged feedback circuits as the body is seen to comprise a myriad possible elements or fragments of a desiring-machine with the potential to disrupt the flow, to proliferate. Mainstream multimedia's desire for 'informational hygiene' would have us transcend this embodied flux and bureaucratise the body into organs. Information is fed through the circuits of sight in a Pavlovian field of buttons and bright links: interactivity is misconceived as choice-making, when 'response' is a more appropriate concept. When the diffuse desire which thrives on disruption and alternative paradigms is written out in favour of informational hygiene, speed and efficient retrieval replace embodied conversation. "Disembodied [interaction] of this kind is always a con... . The entropic, troublesome flesh that is sloughed off in these fantasies of strongly male essentialism is interwoven with the dynamics of self-processing cognition and intentionality. We see computers as embodied culture, hardwired epistemology" (Fuller 2). Avant-garde hypertext deepens the subjective experience of the human-computer interface: it inscribes itself across the diffuse, disruptive desires of the flesh. Alternative interfaces are not an ideological overhaul enabled by the realm of technê, but a space for localised break-outs across the body. Bifurcations are enacted on the micro level by desiring-machines, across an interface which seeks to dislocate intentionality in conjunction with the marginalised sensory apparatus of the reader, drawing other minds, other organs into localised conversation with command-control. "The user learns kinesthetically and proprioceptively that the boundaries of self are defined less by the skin than by the [local] feedback loops connecting body and simulation in a techno-bio-integrated circuit" (Hayles 72). She oscillates between communication and control, play and restraint: not a nomad but a "human Deserter assuming the most diverse forms" (ATP, 422). VI. Desire Working from across the territory we have covered, we might say that electronic interaction 'liberates' us from neither the Line nor the flesh: at its most experimental, it is nothing less than reading embodied. References Barnet, Belinda. "Storming the Interface: Mindvirus, I/O/D and Deceptive Interaction." Artlink: Australian Contemporary Art Quarterly 17:4 (1997). Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987. Fuller, Matt and Simon Pope. "Warning: This Computer Has Multiple Personality Disorder." 1993. 11 Dec. 1998 <http://www.altx.com/wordbombs/popefuller.php>. ---, eds. I/O/D2. Undated. 11 Dec. 1998 <http://www.pHreak.co.uk/i_o_d/>. Hayles, Katherine N. "Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers" October Magazine 66 (Fall 1993): 69-91. Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. "Control and the Cyborg: Writing and Being Written in Hypertext." Journal of Advanced Composition 13:2 (1993): 381-99. Joyce, Michael. Of Two Minds: Hypertext, Pedagogy and Poetics. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995. Moulthrop, Stuart. "No War Machine." 1997. 11 Dec. 1998 <http://raven.ubalt.edu/staff/moulthrop/essays/war_machine.php>. ---. "Rhizome and Resistance: Hypertext and the Dreams of a New Culture." Hyper/Text/Theory. Ed. George P. Landow. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994. 299-319. Rosenberg, Martin E. "Physics and Hypertext: Liberation and Complicity in Art and Pedagogy." Hyper/Text/Theory. Ed. George Landow. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994. 268-298. Selfe, Cynthia L., and Richard J. Selfe. "The Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones." College Composition and Communication 45.4: 480-504. Stone, Allucquére Roseanne. The War of Desire and Technology. London: MIT Press, 1996. Tolva, John. "Ut Pictura Hyperpoesis: Spatial Form, Visuality, and the Digital Word." 1993. 11 Dec. 1998 <http://www.cs.unc.edu/~barman/HT96/P43/pictura.htm>. Virilio, Paul. "The Third Interval: A Critical Transition." Rethinking Technologies. Ed. Verena Conley. London: U of Minnesota P, 1993. 3-12. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Belinda Barnet. "In the Garden of Forking Paths: Contingency, Interactivity and Play in Hypertext." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.5 (1998). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/garden.php>. Chicago style: Belinda Barnet, "In the Garden of Forking Paths: Contingency, Interactivity and Play in Hypertext," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 5 (1998), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/garden.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Belinda Barnet. (1998) In the garden of forking paths: contingency, interactivity and play in hypertext. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(5). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/garden.php> ([your date of access]).

What strikes me about the habits of the people who spend so much time on the Net—well, it’s so new that we don't know what will come next—is in fact precisely how niche in character it is. You ask people what nets they are on, and they’re all so specialised! The Argentines on the Argentine Net and so forth. And it’s particularly the Argentines who are not in Argentina. (Anderson, in Gower, par. 5) The preceding quotation, taken from his 1996 interview with Eric Gower, sees Benedict Anderson reflecting on the formation of imagined, transnational communities on the Internet. Anderson is, of course, famous for his work on how nationalism, as an “imagined community,” gets constructed through the shared consumption of print media (6-7, 26-27); although its readers will never all see each other face to face, people consuming a newspaper or novel in a shared language perceive themselves as members of a collective. In this more recent interview, Anderson recognised the specific groupings of people in online communities: Argentines who find themselves outside of Argentina link up online in an imagined diaspora community. Over the course of the last decade and a half since Anderson spoke about Argentinian migrants and diaspora communities, we have witnessed an exponential growth of new forms of digital communication, including social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), Weblogs, micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter), and video-sharing sites (e.g. YouTube). Alongside these new means of communication, our current epoch of globalisation is also characterised by migration flows across, and between, all continents. In his book Modernity at Large, Arjun Appadurai recognised that “the twin forces of mass migration and electronic mediation” have altered the ways the imagination operates. Furthermore, these two pillars, human motion and digital mediation, are in constant “flux” (44). The circulation of people and digitally mediatised content proceeds across and beyond boundaries of the nation-state and provides ground for alternative community and identity formations. Appadurai’s intervention has resulted in increasing awareness of local, transnational, and global networking flows of people, ideas, and culturally hybrid artefacts. In this article, we analyse the various innovative tactics taken up by migrant youth to imagine digital diasporas. Inspired by scholars such as Appadurai, Avtar Brah and Paul Gilroy, we tease out—from a postcolonial perspective—how digital diasporas have evolved over time from a more traditional understanding as constituted either by a vertical relationship to a distant homeland or a horizontal connection to the scattered transnational community (see Safran, Cohen) to move towards a notion of “hypertextual diaspora.” With hypertextual diaspora, these central axes which constitute the understanding of diaspora are reshuffled in favour of more rhizomatic formations where affiliations, locations, and spaces are constantly destabilised and renegotiated. Needless to say, diasporas are not homogeneous and resist generalisation, but in this article we highlight common ways in which young migrant Internet users renew the practices around diaspora connections. Drawing from research on various migrant populations around the globe, we distinguish three common strategies: (1) the forging of transnational public spheres, based on maintaining virtual social relations by people scattered across the globe; (2) new forms of digital diasporic youth branding; and (3) the cultural production of innovative hypertexts in the context of more rhizomatic digital diaspora formations. Before turning to discuss these three strategies, the potential of a postcolonial framework to recognise multiple intersections of diaspora and digital mediation is elaborated. Hypertext as a Postcolonial Figuration Postcolonial scholars, Appadurai, Gilroy, and Brah among others, have been attentive to diasporic experiences, but they have paid little attention to the specificity of digitally mediated diaspora experiences. As Maria Fernández observes, postcolonial studies have been “notoriously absent from electronic media practice, theory, and criticism” (59). Our exploration of what happens when diasporic youth go online is a first step towards addressing this gap. Conceptually, this is clearly an urgent need since diasporas and the digital inform each other in the most profound and dynamic of ways: “the Internet virtually recreates all those sites which have metaphorically been eroded by living in the diaspora” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Narratives” 396). Writings on the Internet tend to favour either the “gold-rush” mentality, seeing the Web as a great equaliser and bringer of neoliberal progress for all, or the more pessimistic/technophobic approach, claiming that technologically determined spaces are exclusionary, white by default, masculine-oriented, and heteronormative (Everett 30, Van Doorn and Van Zoonen 261). For example, the recent study by Ito et al. shows that young people are not interested in merely performing a fiction in a parallel online world; rather, the Internet gets embedded in their everyday reality (Ito et al. 19-24). Real-life commercial incentives, power hierarchies, and hegemonies also get extended to the digital realm (Schäfer 167-74). Online interaction remains pre-structured, based on programmers’ decisions and value-laden algorithms: “people do not need a passport to travel in cyberspace but they certainly do need to play by the rules in order to function electronically” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Narratives” 405). We began our article with a statement by Benedict Anderson, stressing how people in the Argentinian diaspora find their space on the Internet. Online avenues increasingly allow users to traverse and add hyperlinks to their personal websites in the forms of profile pages, the publishing of preferences, and possibilities of participating in and affiliating with interest-based communities. Online journals, social networking sites, streaming audio/video pages, and online forums are all dynamic hypertexts based on Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) coding. HTML is the protocol of documents that refer to each other, constituting the backbone of the Web; every text that you find on the Internet is connected to a web of other texts through hyperlinks. These links are in essence at equal distance from each other. As well as being a technological device, hypertext is also a metaphor to think with. Figuratively speaking, hypertext can be understood as a non-hierarchical and a-centred modality. Hypertext incorporates multiplicity; different pathways are possible simultaneously, as it has “multiple entryways and exits” and it “connects any point to any other point” (Landow 58-61). Feminist theorist Donna Haraway recognised the dynamic character of hypertext: “the metaphor of hypertext insists on making connections as practice.” However, she adds, “the trope does not suggest which connections make sense for which purposes and which patches we might want to follow or avoid.” We can begin to see the value of approaching the Internet from the perspective of hypertext to make an “inquiry into which connections matter, why, and for whom” (128-30). Postcolonial scholar Jaishree K. Odin theorised how hypertextual webs might benefit subjects “living at the borders.” She describes how subaltern subjects, by weaving their own hypertextual path, can express their multivocality and negotiate cultural differences. She connects the figure of hypertext with that of the postcolonial: The hypertextual and the postcolonial are thus part of the changing topology that maps the constantly shifting, interpenetrating, and folding relations that bodies and texts experience in information culture. Both discourses are characterised by multivocality, multilinearity, openendedness, active encounter, and traversal. (599) These conceptions of cyberspace and its hypertextual foundations coalesce with understandings of “in-between”, “third”, and “diaspora media space” as set out by postcolonial theorists such as Bhabha and Brah. Bhabha elaborates on diaspora as a space where different experiences can be articulated: “These ‘in-between’ spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood—singular or communal—that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation (4). (Dis-)located between the local and the global, Brah adds: “diaspora space is the point at which boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, of belonging and otherness, of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ are contested” (205). As youths who were born in the diaspora have begun to manifest themselves online, digital diasporas have evolved from transnational public spheres to differential hypertexts. First, we describe how transnational public spheres form one dimension of the mediation of diasporic experiences. Subsequently, we focus on diasporic forms of youth branding and hypertext aesthetics to show how digitally mediated practices can go beyond and transgress traditional formations of diasporas as vertically connected to a homeland and horizontally distributed in the creation of transnational public spheres. Digital Diasporas as Diasporic Public Spheres Mass migration and digital mediation have led to a situation where relationships are maintained over large geographical distances, beyond national boundaries. The Internet is used to create transnational imagined audiences formed by dispersed people, which Appadurai describes as “diasporic public spheres”. He observes that, as digital media “increasingly link producers and audiences across national boundaries, and as these audiences themselves start new conversations between those who move and those who stay, we find a growing number of diasporic public spheres” (22). Media and communication researchers have paid a lot of attention to this transnational dimension of the networking of dispersed people (see Brinkerhoff, Alonso and Oiarzabal). We focus here on three examples from three different continents. Most famously, media ethnographers Daniel Miller and Don Slater focused on the Trinidadian diaspora. They describe how “de Rumshop Lime”, a collective online chat room, is used by young people at home and abroad to “lime”, meaning to chat and hang out. Describing the users of the chat, “the webmaster [a Trini living away] proudly proclaimed them to have come from 40 different countries” (though massively dominated by North America) (88). Writing about people in the Greek diaspora, communication researcher Myria Georgiou traced how its mediation evolved from letters, word of mouth, and bulletins to satellite television, telephone, and the Internet (147). From the introduction of the Web, globally dispersed people went online to get in contact with each other. Meanwhile, feminist film scholar Anna Everett draws on the case of Naijanet, the virtual community of “Nigerians Living Abroad”. She shows how Nigerians living in the diaspora from the 1990s onwards connected in global transnational communities, forging “new black public spheres” (35). These studies point at how diasporic people have turned to the Internet to establish and maintain social relations, give and receive support, and share general concerns. Establishing transnational communicative networks allows users to imagine shared audiences of fellow diasporians. Diasporic imagination, however, goes beyond singular notions of this more traditional idea of the transnational public sphere, as it “has nowadays acquired a great figurative flexibility which mostly refers to practices of transgression and hybridisation” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Subjects” 208). Below we recognise another dimension of digital diasporas: the articulation of diasporic attachment for branding oneself. Mocro and Nikkei: Diasporic Attachments as a Way to Brand Oneself In this section, we consider how hybrid cultural practices are carried out over geographical distances. Across spaces on the Web, young migrants express new forms of belonging in their dealing with the oppositional motivations of continuity and change. The generational specificity of this experience can be drawn out on the basis of the distinction between “roots” and “routes” made by Paul Gilroy. In his seminal book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Gilroy writes about black populations on both sides of the Atlantic. The double consciousness of migrant subjects is reflected by affiliating roots and routes as part of a complex cultural identification (19 and 190). As two sides of the same coin, roots refer to the stable and continuing elements of identities, while routes refer to disruption and change. Gilroy criticises those who are “more interested in the relationship of identity to roots and rootedness than in seeing identity as a process of movement and mediation which is more appropriately approached via the homonym routes” (19). He stresses the importance of not just focusing on one of either roots or routes but argues for an examination of their interplay. Forming a response to discrimination and exclusion, young migrants in online networks turn to more positive experiences such as identification with one’s heritage inspired by generational specific cultural affiliations. Here, we focus on two examples that cross two continents, showing routed online attachments to “be(com)ing Mocro”, and “be(coming) Nikkei”. Figure 1. “Leipe Mocro Flavour” music video (Ali B) The first example, being and becoming “Mocro”, refers to a local, bi-national consciousness. The term Mocro originated on the streets of the Netherlands during the late 1990s and is now commonly understood as a Dutch honorary nickname for youths with Moroccan roots living in the Netherlands and Belgium. A 2003 song, Leipe mocro flavour (“Crazy Mocro Flavour”) by Moroccan-Dutch rapper Ali B, familiarised a larger group of people with the label (see Figure 1). Ali B’s song is exemplary for a wider community of youngsters who have come to identify themselves as Mocros. One example is the Marokkanen met Brainz – Hyves (Mo), a community page within the Dutch social networking site Hyves. On this page, 2,200 youths who identify as Mocro get together to push against common stereotypes of Moroccan-Dutch boys as troublemakers and thieves and Islamic Moroccan-Dutch girls as veiled carriers of backward traditions (Leurs, forthcoming). Its description reads, “I assume that this Hyves will be the largest [Mocro community]. Because logically Moroccans have brains” (our translation): What can you find here? Discussions about politics, religion, current affairs, history, love and relationships. News about Moroccan/Arabic Parties. And whatever you want to tell others. Use your brains. Second, “Nikkei” directs our attention to Japanese migrants and their descendants. The Discover Nikkei website, set up by the Japanese American National Museum, provides a revealing description of being and becoming Nikkei: As Nikkei communities form in Japan and throughout the world, the process of community formation reveals the ongoing fluidity of Nikkei populations, the evasive nature of Nikkei identity, and the transnational dimensions of their community formations and what it means to be Nikkei. (Japanese American National Museum) This site was set up by the Japanese American National Museum for Nikkei in the global diaspora to connect and share stories. Nikkei youths of course also connect elsewhere. In her ethnographic online study, Shana Aoyama found that the social networking site Hi5 is taken up in Peru by young people of Japanese heritage as an avenue for identity exploration. She found group confirmation based on the performance of Nikkei-ness, as well as expressions of individuality. She writes, “instead of heading in one specific direction, the Internet use of Nikkei creates a starburst shape of identity construction and negotiation” (119). Mocro-ness and Nikkei-ness are common collective identification markers that are not just straightforward nationalisms. They refer back to different homelands, while simultaneously they also clearly mark one’s situation of being routed outside of this homeland. Mocro stems from postcolonial migratory flows from the Global South to the West. Nikkei-ness relates to the interesting case of the Japanese diaspora, which is little accounted for, although there are many Japanese communities present in North and South America from before the Second World War. The context of Peru is revealing, as it was the first South American country to accept Japanese migrants. It now hosts the second largest South American Japanese diaspora after Brazil (Lama), and Peru’s former president, Alberto Fujimoro, is also of Japanese origin. We can see how the importance of the nation-state gets blurred as diasporic youth, through cultural hybridisation of youth culture and ethnic ties, initiates subcultures and offers resistance to mainstream western cultural forms. Digital spaces are used to exert youthful diaspora branding. Networked branding includes expressing cultural identities that are communal and individual but also both local and global, illustrative of how “by virtue of being global the Internet can gift people back their sense of themselves as special and particular” (Miller and Slater 115). In the next section, we set out how youthful diaspora branding is part of a larger, more rhizomatic formation of multivocal hypertext aesthetics. Hypertext Aesthetics In this section, we set out how an in-between, or “liminal”, position, in postcolonial theory terms, can be a source of differential and multivocal cultural production. Appadurai, Bhabha, and Gilroy recognise that liminal positions increasingly leave their mark on the global and local flows of cultural objects, such as food, cinema, music, and fashion. Here, our focus is on how migrant youths turn to hypertextual forms of cultural production for a differential expression of digital diasporas. Hypertexts are textual fields made up of hyperlinks. Odin states that travelling through cyberspace by clicking and forging hypertext links is a form of multivocal digital diaspora aesthetics: The perpetual negotiation of difference that the border subject engages in creates a new space that demands its own aesthetic. This new aesthetic, which I term “hypertext” or “postcolonial,” represents the need to switch from the linear, univocal, closed, authoritative aesthetic involving passive encounters characterising the performance of the same to that of non-linear, multivocal, open, non-hierarchical aesthetic involving active encounters that are marked by repetition of the same with and in difference. (Cited in Landow 356-7) On their profile pages, migrant youth digitally author themselves in distinct ways by linking up to various sites. They craft their personal hypertext. These hypertexts display multivocal diaspora aesthetics which are personal and specific; they display personal intersections of affiliations that are not easily generalisable. In several Dutch-language online spaces, subjects from Dutch-Moroccan backgrounds have taken up the label Mocro as an identity marker. Across social networking sites such as Hyves and Facebook, the term gets included in nicknames and community pages. Think of nicknames such as “My own Mocro styly”, “Mocro-licious”, “Mocro-chick”. The term Mocro itself is often already multilayered, as it is often combined with age, gender, sexual preference, religion, sport, music, and generationally specific cultural affiliations. Furthermore, youths connect to a variety of groups ranging from feminist interests (“Women in Charge”), Dutch nationalism (“I Love Holland”), ethnic affiliations (“The Moroccan Kitchen”) to clothing (the brand H&M), and global junk food (McDonalds). These diverse affiliations—that are advertised online simultaneously—add nuance to the typical, one-dimensional stereotype about migrant youth, integration, and Islam in the context of Europe and Netherlands (Leurs, forthcoming). On the online social networking site Hi5, Nikkei youths in Peru, just like any other teenagers, express their individuality by decorating their personal profile page with texts, audio, photos, and videos. Besides personal information such as age, gender, and school information, Aoyama found that “a starburst” of diverse affiliations is published, including those that signal Japanese-ness such as the Hello Kitty brand, anime videos, Kanji writing, kimonos, and celebrities. Also Nikkei hyperlink to elements that can be identified as “Latino” and “Chino” (Chinese) (104-10). Furthermore, users can show their multiple affiliations by joining different “groups” (after which a hyperlink to the group community appears on the profile page). Aoyama writes “these groups stretch across a large and varied scope of topics, including that of national, racial/ethnic, and cultural identities” (2). These examples illustrate how digital diasporas encompass personalised multivocal hypertexts. With the widely accepted adagio “you are what you link” (Adamic and Adar), hypertextual webs can be understood as productions that reveal how diasporic youths choose to express themselves as individuals through complex sets of non-homogeneous identifications. Migrant youth connects to ethnic origin and global networks in eclectic and creative ways. The concept of “digital diaspora” therefore encapsulates both material and virtual (dis)connections that are identifiable through common traits, strategies, and aesthetics. Yet these hypertextual connections are also highly personalised and unique, offering a testimony to the fluid negotiations and intersections between the local and the global, the rooted and the diasporic. Conclusions In this article, we have argued that migrant youths render digital diasporas more complex by including branding and hypertextual aesthetics in transnational public spheres. Digital diasporas may no longer be understood simply in terms of their vertical relations to a homeland or place of origin or as horizontally connected to a clearly marked transnational community; rather, they must also be seen as engaging in rhizomatic digital practices, which reshuffle traditional understandings of origin and belonging. Contemporary youthful digital diasporas are therefore far more complex in their engagement with digital media than most existing theory allows: connections are hybridised, and affiliations are turned into practices of diasporic branding and becoming. There is a generational specificity to multivocal diaspora aesthetics; this specificity lies in the ways migrant youths show communal recognition and express their individuality through hypertext which combines affiliation to their national/ethnic “roots” with an embrace of other youth subcultures, many of them transnational. 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