to: ellipsis ...
from: jcj
30 June 1996
subject: twenty-five letters
attachments: the internet as it was
: the unnamed something else
dear Tom and Jonathan*
To complete the net version of the book I am going
to send you 25 letters, one a day between now and
25 July, the anniversary of your asking me to
write it. Linked to each letter will be some of
the texts that I have written during the year in
my attempts to write about this medium, and in it.
The first text is a record of my first impressions
of the internet. The second is part of the
synopsis which I sent you at the beginning, placed
between sentences from a poem by William
Wordsworth. It sets a tone which I would like to
follow in the letters, combining the poetic with
the technical and the mind with the world. My
purpose in writing these letters is not so much to
connect the attached texts into a narrative
(though I began with that intention) but to get
into words the kinds of thinking and experience
that led me to write them. In this way I hope to
share with you and other people something of the
connectivity and fluidity that I believe exists in
all our minds despite the split-up nature of
experience in this mechanised world. That is the
first step. with good wishes jcj