Annotation as social construction of knowledge

Public annotation induces the collective production of knowledge and ways of disseminating and searching for information and allows for effective communication to become an ongoing process.

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Text and writing is deeply intertwined with the world. Indeed, the famous French philosopher Jacques Derrida writes, “il n’y a pas de hors-texte,” or “there is no outside-text,” in Of Grammatology. Here, he’s claiming that we use context to make sense of things. Text exists in a certain field of meaning and expresses an idea, a thought, a concept, at a given chronological moment. Thus, the text is pure expression of a certain ontological construction, in that its being and meaning is created within the context in which it exists. That context inherently requires a reader of the text, and their own experiences. As such, the text is a production open to reflection, a discourse that opens itself to interpretation, dissent, pure dialogue, and also art of memory. For example, when a reader goes back to a book they had formerly read, they come to it with new memories and new ideas, so the experience of this second read is different.