Text Without Essence

"Intellectual property in words may never have been rooted in a substance, an essence , but we could fool ourselves most of the time that it was. Words there on the page. Look at them. Compare them. That book there with the splendid red binding, that's mine. I wrote it. The Great American Novel. The definitive edition of The Great American Novel. The greatest critical discussion of The Great American Novel. The electronic word has no essence, no quiddity, no substance of this sort. It exists in potential as what it can become, in the genetic structures it can build." (Richard A. Lanham The Electronic Word 19).

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