Reading and analyzing text in the digital world

In the digital world our relation to texts is profoundly modified: Mainly we do not read and analyse them in the same manner. For instance due to the hypertextuality, the paritextuality, the intertextuality, etc, that digitality offers, reading may still continue to be linear, but it now becomes tabular, discontinued, partial, stratified, etc.

Text analysis also changes profoundly. Interpretation is still necessary but a new hermeneutic process is emerging. It is deeply influenced by an algorithmic type of materiality. Hence analysis of text is modified. For instance, lexical, stylistic, thematic, conceptual analysis takes new forms. Most of all, this type of analysis may even change our conception of what is a text.

More profoundly this computationalyl assisted interpretation of texts reveals the necessity of interaction between the computer and the reader. This invites a more open understanding of the concept of computation itself. It may even mean that the classical Turing machine model itself has to be modified so as to integrate some type of interaction with the environment. A proposition that Turing himself has foreseen.