Boundaries to protocols: Conceptions of the ‘book’ in a networked environment

The concept of the codex book is deeply imprinted on scholarly and literary traditions. It bears within it assumptions about bounded-ness and stability as defining features of the form. Works conceived in a networked environment are referred to as books, but may not exist within the same structural conditions. This article reviews some of the ways the conceptions of the physical codex are linked to production and poses questions about the identity of artefacts produced by processes and protocols in a networked environment. It argues that these unbounded and contingently configured documents do not merely extend the traditional codex, with its apparatus of footnotes, bibliographical citations, and other paratexts, but that these are substantively different types of textual productions because of their fluid instability.