Lecture 3: Hypertext

Prof. AlvaradoMDST 3703/77034 September 2012

Business

• The weekly blogging cycle– READ, COMMENT, DISCUSS, POST, REPEAT– Comment by Monday at 5– Post after class on Thursday (by Friday at 5)

• Grace period this week …

Review

• Digital representation– Anything can be represented by numbers– Numbers are just characters that can be

manipulated (sorted, counted, repeated, etc.)– Information is just a series of characters

• Can we/you come up with a system to represent taste?

A Code for Taste

BITTER B: 0..15SOUR S: 0..15SALTY T: 0..15SWEET W: 0..15UMAMI U: 0..15

(the tongue map is actually a myth …)

* Yields a system that can represent about a million flavors (i.e. 165)

* Every taste can be represented by a five segment number: B.S.T.W.U

A CODE FOR TASTE?

Imagine this potato “printed” by a 3D printer and composed of 3D “pixels” each with a taste value. The “ink” for this printer would be a mixture of chemicals that can “print” pure droplets of salty, savory, sweet, etc., that get combined in each pixel.

Taste “files”

Each element in the source file would be represented by an 8 segment number, 3 for the X,Y,Z position, and 5 for the B,S,T,W,U taste code

Hypertext

Liberation

What does hypertext liberate us from? How?

“When reading these articles and watching the video, it immediately made think of Quentin Tarantino movies, The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, and the Choose Your Own Adventure books I checked out it bulk as a kid – all have this out-of-order connectedness, similar to how hypertext functions, that create a very satisfying (user) experience. People don’t naturally seem to think sequentially – it almost seems like more of an effort.”

“All of these authors see hypertext as a way to escape the many limitations of the analog, terrestrial world by making text multidimensional and placing it in a networked informational system, which breaks down the barriers of a linear world.”

Liberation from …

• Hierarchy and linear thinking implied by how books and libraries are organized

• Limits imposed by the material form of texts that prevent minds from making natural connections

Where does hierarchy come in?

Where do you find it?

Hierarchy

Organization of the library Organization of the book

Goes back to Aristotle …

So, what’s wrong with hierarchy?

Hierarchies fail because things belong in more than one place

[Tomato]

How does digital text overcome these problems?

Let’s look at the history …

Ritual Writing ComputersLithic Periods 4000 BC 1945

Prehistory

80,000 BC

Timeline

1945: Vannevar Bush conceives of the Memex1965: Ted Nelson coins the word “hypertext” and proposes “Xanadu”1967: Andy Van Dam develops first hypertext system at Brown1975: ZOG/KMS developed at CMU1987: Apple introduces HyperCard1991: WorldWideWeb at CERN becomes first global hypertext

Vannevar Bush

• American, 1899—1974• Attended Harvard, MIT,

Tufts• Engineer• Director of the Office of

Scientific Research and Development in WWII

• Inventor of memex concept, precursor to hypertext

What is the problem Bush addresses in As We May Think?

A record if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted.

There is a growing mountain of research.

Publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record.

AND

BUT

What makes it hard to find things?

The problem of selection

When data are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path. . . . The hman mind does not work that way. It operates by association.

How does the Memex solve the

problem of selection?

It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book. It is more than this, for any item can be joined into numerous trails.

READING AS WRITING

Key ideas

• Associative indexing– “Any item may be caused at will to select

immediately and automatically another”– “This is the essential feature of the memex”

• Trails and Codes• The idea is to have media model how the

mind (supposedly) works• Any analogs in contemporary technology?

Theodor Hom Nelson

• American, b. 1937• Attended Swarthmore

College• Studied sociology at

Harvard University• Invented term

“hypertext” in 1965• Conceived of Xanadu

“Hypertext is non-sequential writinng”

From Literary Machines

Key Ideas

• Computer “files” simply reproduce the metaphor of documents and catalogs (hierarchy)

• Computers should be “literary machines”– From the beginning they have been used and imaging as

machines for representing and manipulating text• Again, the dream is to have them model the way

the mind works– Interactive and associative, not static and linear

• Nothing is forgotten, nothing is lost (because linked)

Some definitions

• Hypertext: Non-sequential writing• Lexia: a unit of text• Link: a segment of text that interrupts the reading

of one lexia and moves you to another • Text: a collection of linked lexia• Hypermedia: A hypertext system involving other

media, such as sounds, images, and videos.• Latent Hypertext: Hypertext implied in analog

media

Axial Hypertext

Types of Hypertext

AXIAL hypertext

RHIZOMIC hypertext

Sir Tim Berners-Lee

• English, b. 1955• Attended Oxford 1976• Physicist• A fellow at CERN• Inventor of the World

Wide Web per se• Unitarian• Made a Knight

Commander, Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth

Dan Brown, Angels & Demons, p. 19

[Angels and Demons]

“In March 1989, Tim Berners-Lee submitted a proposal for an information management system to his boss, Mike Sendall. ‘Vague, but exciting’, were the words that Sendall wrote on the proposal, allowing Berners-Lee to continue.”

(http://info.cern.ch/Proposal.html)

[CERN doc]

[BL quote are social org]

“CERN is a wonderful organisation. It involves several thousand people …. Although they are nominally organised into a hierarchical management structure, this does not constrain the way people will communicate, and share information, equipment and software across groups. … The actual observed working structure of the organisation is a multiply connected "web" whose interconnections evolve with time.”

[Berners-Lee’s diagram]

Berners-Lee’s was the first system to link lexia across the network

Hypertext not only linked lexia, but people – across the planet

<a href=“http://www.virginia.edu”>UVA</a>

The link in HTML connects more than lexia

Nelson never liked the Web

• The web remains bound to the metaphor of the file

• Links point to files (for the most part), not to true lexia

• Links are also “dumb” – they don’t go in both directions, and they are not named (as Bush would have wanted)

• Google has changed this some …