About

Dr.Hava CohenIt all started when we decided to renovate our house. The endless stories that we met on a daily basis were hilarious. As friends and neighbors heard it, they suggested that we write them down so people can learn from our experience. And so I did, starting with the renovation and later, describing our travels and adventures with airways companies and hotels.

I am a retired independent scholar and blogger. I write for people who love books and stories; for people who love travel, excursions, and the good things in life in general, and friends who love to listen to my thoughts and adventures and learn from others’ experiences.

My name is Dr. Hava Ritter-Cohen. My thesis is about literature and computers, “Literary Hypertext: The Electronic Attempt to Break Textual Norms”, and is published in print and in Kindle format. The two subjects, literature and computers, which seem miles apart, come together in the narrative. Literature, as is obvious, deals mostly with narrative, with stories. How do computers come into it? Computers have become a tool for producing a story. In the beginning, computers replaced the typing machines, which in their turn replaced handwriting – all are technologies for creating and publishing stories. We can find short stories, legends and myths, poetry and drama, and even novels on the Internet. Project Gutenberg, for example, places at our disposal most of the classic fiction; we just need the time and patience to read it. I concentrated on a special writing technique, which computer science, and nowadays everyone refers to as hypertext.

What does hypertext mean exactly? Hypertext is the kind of text with links that take us to other pages, like the text we are used to on the Internet. For example, the name Project Gutenberg is a link to the project. Computers enable the concrete realization of the inter-text and outer-text relations and connections. Some researchers see different kinds of connections within the text, like allusions to other texts, as the equivalent of the hypertext link. Computers allow the externalization, the open presentation of those relations.

If these subjects interest you as well, you are more than welcome to follow my blog and contact me if you wish. My email: havacohe@gmail.com.

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