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revision 1.8 by benja, Sun Sep 14 19:33:31 2003 UTC revision 1.9 by benja, Mon Sep 15 10:31:25 2003 UTC
# Line 8  Abstract Line 8  Abstract
8  Introduction  Introduction
9  ============  ============
10    
11  blaa ...  Hypermedia was meant to be an extension to the mind. "As We May Think,"
12    Vannemar Bush entitled his famous article (1945__); Engelbart(1962__)
13    set "Augmenting Human Intellect" as his goal, and Nelson (1965__)
14    envisioned a system "holding everything [a novelist or absent-minded
15    professor] wanted in just the way he wanted it to be held."
16    
17    __ http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm
18    __ http://www.bootstrap.org/augdocs/friedewald030402/augmentinghumanintellect/ahi62index.html
19    __ http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=806036&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&CFID=12221347&CFTOKEN=93164645
20    
21    Today, Nelson suggests that "[i]n the near future, the Wearable
22    computer will be a standard part of the thoughtful person's social ensemble"
23    (1998__), for keeping track of "memoranda, names and addresses, appointments,
24    obligations, things to do, things to buy, things to have fixed, payments to make,
25    transactions, things to say to people, phrases to put into writings,
26    etc." (2000__).
27    
28    __ http://www.xanadu.com.au/ted/zigzag/xybrap.html
29    __ http://www.xanadu.com.au/mail/zzdev/msg02237.html
30    
31    Browsing our notes would be part of our thought process,
32    making links would be part of understanding an idea.
33    Such a computer would become a part of ourselves, an extension
34    to the mind, like the written word. It would *aid the thought
35    process* like scribbling down notes on a piece of paper,
36    unifying all the notes into a single place, an
37    external memory of sorts that would allow us to call up
38    all of our thoughts about a subject with the flick of an
39    electronic stylus.
40    
41    This is yet to happen.
42    
43    Current computer systems are not at all suited to the task.
44    
45    What is needed is a hypermedia system in which the
46    concepts people care about-- the places, appointments, ideas,
47    the *items*, in Nelson's words (2000__)-- are visible in
48    and linkable the system. What is needed, in technical terms,
49    is a hypermedia system in which items are first-class objects.
50    
51    __ http://www.xanadu.com.au/mail/zzdev/msg02237.html
52    
53    In such a system, to remember that we have "a meeting with
54    Carli today at 2:15 about the book", we would create a new
55    item (the meeting) and link it to Carli (another item) and
56    the book (a third item), and also connect the meeting to its
57    scheduled time.
58    
59    Then, whenever we come across the book or the person in any
60    context, we could see their connections to the meeting.
61    For example, when we are mulling about an issue we have noted
62    we must discuss with Carli (a note that would be linked
63    to the Carli-item), we could quickly see that we will meet
64    with her today. We could then link the issue to be part
65    of the meeting's agenda (an item the meeting is linked to).
66    
67    (Using typed links, we could also turn particular types
68    of links on and off, and thus would not have to see the
69    connection *all* the time when thinking about Carli--
70    only when meetings are on our mind.)
71    
72    Such a system would be able to appropriately represent
73    the interconnectedness of items in our lives, making hypermedia
74    truly a tool for thought.
75    
76    But as long as information is stored in disconnected files,
77    as long as it is not naturally connected to the *items* it
78    is about, this will not happen (and the best we can do
79    even with advanced navigational hypertext tools
80    is to link information *in addition to*
81    entering it into the system, rather than linking it
82    *by* putting it into the system)
83    
84    Therefore, we need a new computer environment, centered around
85    *items* rather than applications and files, an environment
86    where everything we do, all information that we enter, is part
87    of the network of linked items.
88    
89    We need a system in which
90    appointments aren't pieces of data entered into a calendar
91    application, but items linked to other items; a system where
92    letters are not files we need to store in a directory structure,
93    but items connected to the recipients of the letter and the
94    things that are discussed in the letter; a system where our
95    ideas and problems exist as first class objects *at all*, linked
96    to the things that we need to know about them.
97    
98    This is what, we submit, common-use hypermedia can be,
99    ten years from now.
100    
101    
 In this article, we present the Hyperstructure paradigm ...  
102    
103  A Catalogue of Hypermedia Structures  A Catalogue of Hypermedia Structures
104  ====================================  ====================================

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