The End of the Word As We Know It "For the past several decades, philosophers and critics have been arguing about the end of history and the closure of the book. But these debates consistently miss the crucial point. The issue is neither philosophical nor literary but technological. History ends and the book disappears when narrative continuity collapses in the instant. Speed is the agent of this collapse. To attempt to resurrect history or reopen the book is to try to put the brakes on the speed that has become our milieu." -- Taylor and Saarinen, Imagologies (1993) next

Don't You Just Hate When That Happens? Have we experienced "paradigm shift?" Or is it merely (as Doug Engelbart says) "paradigm shiftlessness?" Do Taylor and Saarinen really understand post-print technologies? Does anyone? next

Hypertext Is More Than The Web Putting hypertext into perspective: Bush, Engelbart, Nelson: Augmentation of human intellect Birkerts/Coover: "The End of Books" Jay David Bolter: "The revenge of the text upon television." "The Websters:" What we're doing till the VR starts... next

Hypertext History (So Far) 1945: "As We May Think" 1965: Nelson names the beast 1970: Mansfield Amendment; PARC 1987: HyperCard; ACM SIGLINK 1990: World Wide Web 1995: Netscape 2.0 next

Ted Nelson, "Xanadu" (1965) "Intercomparison in Depth" "Transclusion" "Transcopyright" next

Imagining Xanadu A typocentric model How to "intercompare" sound bites? How to "transclude" a film clip? A parochial model Though relations are complex and multiple, only a few are visible at one time -- probably just a single link. next

Bolter & Joyce, Storyspace» (1985 - ) "Spatializing writing" (Bolter) "Words that yield" (Joyce) (Close afternoon's window to return to the talk.) next

Storyspace is "Serious Hypertext" Joyce's "yields" introduce concept of depth Texts connect in multiple dimensions, not just side-by-side Storyspace popularizes graphical navigation Hypertext is hard to grasp without a map The mapping problem needs much more attention next

Serious Reservations Like Xanadu, Storyspace privileges traditional forms Bolter: "To structure knowledge, we need a book..." Storyspace also tends to be parochial Most Storyspace work is disk-based Elaborate maps require constrained structures Who can map the Web? next

T. Berners-Lee et al., World Wide Web (1990 - ) "Nelson didn't ship." Not so Mosaic, Netscape, and the Web... "It's HyperCard all over again." Exactly (Close Hegirascope's window to return to the talk.) next

You Can't Be Serious! Ted Nelson looks at the Web: "A labyrinth of changing shopwindows." "Divingboards into darkness... the perfect medium for a generation that doesn't know where it came from and has no idea where it's going." Serious Limitations of the Web: Pointers rather than links: list-o-mania Very little content depth No genuine interactivity next

Why the Web Matters The Web ends the hegemony of print "The revenge of text" -- ? Or the marriage of writing and video? The Web is non-local Distributed authorship and publishing "Surfing" sets the reader in motion Dynamic documents are increasingly common And the action is just beginning... next

The End of the Web As We Know It Netscape 2.0 Dynamic documents (push, pull) Frames Sun's "Java" programming language Java Extend Web pages with "applets" Promises greater interactivity ??? next

Straits of Java "...hypertext... offers a visually static page of information [which] can also have 'depth' where it contains hyperlinks connecting to other documents or resources... Java... transforms a hypertext page into a stage, complete with the chance for actors and players to appear and things to happen... Users encountering Java programs can take part in a wider variety of interactive behavior, limited only by the imagination and skill of the Java programmer." -- John December, Presenting Java (1995) next

What Does This Mean? A labyrinth of... custom labyrinths? Yet further explosions of style and weirdness Emergent form: "a structure for what does not yet exist." Say what? next

The New Coherence "When depth gives way to surface, under-standing becomes inter-standing. To comprehend is no longer to grasp what lies beneath but to glimpse what lies between." -- Taylor and Saarinen, Imagologies Figure and ground: statements resolve (momentarily) against a shifting ground of possibilities; The medium is the massage... next

The Toronto Catechism What does HM enhance? connections; dimensions; networks: STORY-SPACE What does HM make obsolete? Mass culture; "the press" What does HM retrieve? Niche culture; complex storytelling; "craft" What does HM become at its limit? A new political economy of writing A new profession? next

Well, you know... "Try to design anything that way and have it work." -- Thomas Pynchon What work can we do with hypermedia? next

We'll Find Out