A “distributed network” is a term that is used to describe the construction of an art work or the construction of a narrative across a ‘distributed network’ such as the Internet (I have yet to discover what this might mean for an historian). There is an excellent paper online written by Dr Jill Walker of the University of Bergen (given at the Association of Internet Reserchers AOIRs in September) where she talks about distributed networks in terms of story telling and narrative.
Abstract
A new kind of narrative is emerging from the network: the distributed
narrative. Distributed narratives don?t bring media together to make a
total artwork. Distributed narratives explode the work altogether, sending fragments and shards across media, through the network and sometimes into the physical spaces that we live in. This paper begins an investigation into this new narrative trend, looking at how narrative is spun across the network and into our lives.
http://huminf.uib.no/~jill/txt/AoIR-distributednarrative.pdf
