Chapters One
[Introductory Chapters]
An Obvious Vision
Computers do what we request them to do, some ”technoids“ mislead the world pretending the way computers are now is they ”nature.“ We should use computers to assist us on our daily lives. We should be able to read from vast libraries of interconnected writings and ideas on the computer's screens.
Hope 1: Simplicity
Things are getting more and more complicated, instead of being simplified. The computer world lacks a sense of urgency about this.
No Computer school teaches simplicity. Is it beneath them? Or do they simply not imagine it, believing that to teach Complication is their job? [p. 1/3]
Simplicity is the result of hard work on good unified design. Design begins with the seeming of the intended system.
Hope 2: Access to Ideas
Access to ideas should be generalized. There should be a rebirth of the traditional American ideals of liberty, pluralism and accessibility of ideas.
Imagine a new accessibility and excitement that can unseat the video narcosis that now sits on our land like a fog. Imagine a new libertarian literature with alternative explanations so anyone can choose the pathway or approach that best suits him or her; with ideas accessible and interesting to everyone, so that a new richness and freedom can come to the human experience; imagine a rebirth of literacy. All that is what this book is about. [p.1/4]
[Precedents]
This book is a new, computerized form of the Memex proposed by Vannevar Bush. It bases also upon the work of Doug Engelbart, that not only invented word processing and the mouse, but hat also a vision of instant text access on screens.
The Sense Of Wonderful Developments
Some new technologies are available such as videotext, videocable, networks (ARPANET, USENET, Compu-Serve). They are complicated and incompatible. It is clear that the future of the written word is electronic publishing, but it is unclear what it will look like. This book proposes a unified, simple approach to this.
I believe there exists a clean, complete and thorough solution. And that is what will be described here. [p. 1/10]
Two Cultures Face The Future
The two opposing cultures stressed by C. P. Snow, humanities and technology, share a false notion of computers as being inhuman and reductionist, even though the later endorse and the former dismiss it. Let us call them the ”fluffies“ and the ”noids.“
The ”noids“ have a rigid and punitive notion of ”logic,“ they love intricacies and complication and are inhuman.
My favorite example is the typical Technoid insistence that you can't type a number into a computer using the letter Oh, you have to use the numeral Zero, because otherwise it isn't Logical. This despite the fact that a computer can easily be programmed to recognize that when you type Oh in the middle of a number you mean Zero, just the way a program can distinguish between a decimal point and a period, or a hyphen and a minus— contextually. [p. 1/11]
The ”fluffies“ do not understand computing at all, despite its importance for literature.
And they do not like computers or the idea of screens. ”I love books,“ ”I hate computers,“ ”It sounds so cold,“ ”I can't see cuddling up with a CRT in bed,“ ”I can't take it on the train (in a hammock, into the woods),“ etc. They have no conception of the importance and immediacy of creating an electronic literature that embodies what they believe in. [p. 1/12]
Both groups see each other as occupying a little corner and oneself in the ”real“ world — the real world of technology, respectively of history.
There is a third option, to be a systems humanist.
We who believe this are systems humanists, striving to further the ideals of the humanist perspective by the best available means. This means finding the ways that human literature, art and thought —including science, of course— may best be facilitated, preserved, and disseminated. [p. 1/13]
This book proposes a basic infrastructure such as running water, the availability of literature for everybody anytime, to aid the fluidity of thought.
Hypertext
Writing is not intrinsically sequential. Sequential writing spoils the unity and structure and forces a single inappropriate read sequence.
A particular sequential structure might be appropriate for someone and inappropriate for someone else. It would be preferable to easily create different pathways for different readers.
Non sequential alternatives:
- Chunk style hypertext. One sees a chunk of text at a time and can jump to another one following a link.
- Windowing (or compound) text. Materials are viewed and combined with others.
- Windowing hypertext. Its generalized form: non sequential writings (hypertexts) window to other materials. This is the notion developed at the present book.
The sequential structure has been too much present for thousands of years. It does not correspond to the structure of ideas and thought processes.
”Computers are not intrinsically involved with the hypertext concept.“ [p. 1/17]
The hypertext is not a totally new phenomenon, though, it is fundamentally traditional and in the mainstream of literature. Example: citing ahead and behind (”as we have already said“) one sets implicit pointers.
Hypertext simplifies writing by freeing the writer from stipulating a sequence.
Hypertext aids active reading by supporting multiple pathways inside the text and into background material.
There are two styles of hypertext organization: connections as planned presentations or connections following the inner structure.
Orientation is a problem that is becoming apparent. The location one is reading is in a book or a magazine always clear by physical means, for hypertext the means must be invented.
Hypertext will lead to a better representation of thought because it can show all interconnections one can think of.
Intercomparison systems for comparing alternatives will become a vital aspect of our working lives.
The School Problem
The curriculum oversimplifies subjects putting them into a sequential structure.
Teachers become feudal Lords of a territory and impose their own style and personality on it. They have absolute power and control access.
Whatever is taken in school gets hence uninteresting.
Thus follow both the dreariness of education and the crippling of the mind as we see it everywhere today. Education is typically the process of successively ruining subjects for you, and the last subject to be ruined determines your profession. An educated person is someone who says, ”I don't know anything about that, I never took it.“ Whereas a free-minded person can become excited about a new idea, in any subject, whether or not he or she ever heard about the idea or the subject before. [p. 1/20]
As a consequence of this system everyone believes that the world is divided into ”subjects“ and that these are well-defined and well-ordered.
That crushes people's mental spirits.
A Brief History Of The Xanadu Caper
The project started as a one-man's dream. While studying the author was seeking for a way to organize all his notes for writings. In graduate school he took a course in programming and worked as term project in a computerized writing system; that was the first design, 1960. The second design introduced the chunk style hypertext and elements of computer assisted instruction. The third design (1965) concentrated on ”zippered lists,“ a data structure consisting of indexes.
In the 1970s some people joined the project and made important contributions to its design, such as the ”enfilades“ and ”tumblers.“ In the 1980s the work is going on.
”As We May Think“ by Vannevar Bush
Reprint of Bush's article As We May Think (1945).
