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They are toys. They use them to surf the web in meetings, they play games on it, and so on. They use them to have fun and waste time, not to do work.

Academics are those whose mission is to pursue knowledge for knowledge’s sake. I’m not surprised many professors are entranced by tablet devices (iPads) given my own experience with them.

As a former academic who currently works in web development, I have an iPad and I wish wish WISH that I had had one when I had been a professor. I use a PDF reader (iAnnotate) that allows me to annotate PDFs, upload those PDFs to my desktop. From there I can (using custom PERL scripts) generate XML containing the content and metadata of those annotations, which XML objects I incorporate into an XML editor/viewer (Tinderbox) for editing, organizing, and HTML export. I bring the exported HTML into a CMS and publish that on the web. Between these pieces of software and hardware is ENORMOUS pedagogical potential

I know this because I had such a system in place as a faculty and students who hated Blackboard regularly commented how useful and more efficient my online course materials were. This was pre-tablet device (read pre-iPad), so I had been using a desktop program (open source Skim) to make these annotations. iAnnotate is a much more direct translation of book-reading skills and had iPads existed prior to my leaving academia for the Silicon Valley, I would have been using one, too.

tl;dr: I suspect that the "ooh shiny" professors have for tablet devices is actually the realization that touch devices are a paradigm shift from desktops, a paradigm with its own set of advantages and possibilities. Faculty buy into these things not because they are easily distracted but because they have a researcher’s curiosity for useful technologies.

Disclaimer: I am Apple user and have been since my Apple IIe in 1984. I began using Macs in 1991 and have a lot of experience with them. In other words, I'm not your average user and I'm extra careful with my data and my setup. I create a bootable backup before upgrading, etc.

When I upgrade to Snow Leopard I installed Rosetta because some of the software I depend upon cannot be run without it. While using this piece of amazing and somewhat buggy software my screen went blue and I was "spontaneously logged out." I encounter this problem only in the buggy software but I am not the only one experiencing such problems. Apparently there are scores if not hundreds (thousands?) of users affected by this "spontaneous log out." No amount of backing up is going to completely protect you if your computer goes tits up for no discernible reason at all.

I love me some Apple products but I also recognize some of those products have serious QA issues which are not only unaddressed but Apple has not even acknowledged them. Such bugs are not the fault of "extraordinary" users even if we can understand how a very esoteric and hard-to-replicate bugs may not show up in the testing phase.

Greets!

OK, up front, I work with Ted, I know him personally, I admire him a lot, so feel free to ignore this post if you want to continue your bigoted, uninformed opinions instead of learning something.

First up, Ted is NOT an uninformed old man - he is the reason, along with Bush and Englebart, that you are all sitting in front of interconnected computers.

Author of two of the most influential books of the computer age, Literary Machines and Computer Lib/Dream Machines (not available in print - I have a copy or two if people are interested), creator of Xanadu WHICH IS AVAILABLE as the Udanax project [site down - Google cache] in both Gold and Green versions.

Victim of a Wired hatchet job - see his reply here

You'll have to take his word for it, but he's pretty sure when asked how his ideas could be simplified, he answered "you could make links one way and use a back button". Familiar?

Everyone that talks about transclusion or linking is refering back to Ted's work.

So show some respect, inform yoursleves and then perhaps, just for once, an informed debate can occur on slashdot!

The tone of the article is unfortunate. But it's also too bad that really good technology gets dissed by the tech community if it's well marketed. mSpace is a rather sophisticated system for storing and relating arbitrary unstructured information in meaningful ways. The interface doesn't do it full justice.

McGuffin and Schraefel's paper of mSpaces, polyarchies and zzStructures won the ACM Hypertext Conference's award for "Special Research Distinction for Excellent Presentation of Theoretical Concepts."

Schraefel is not only a good programmer, doing very cutting edge information technology stuff, but she and her team have managed to design a useful piece of software that uses it. Since when can the Academic world do this kind of thing?

*sigh* People diss Nelson when he comes up with incredibly good ideas and quality computer science. And now, when people like Schraefel produce a usable product, they get dissed too. Before you go snarking about how the Semantic Web won't come down from heaven and die on a cross for us, make sure you know what the Semantic Web is. Just like Harpers, this is a perfectly cool example.

What do I think about the Semantic Web? I will admit, I sometimes wonder if it's safe.

I've always been interested in interactive storytelling. When I was a creative writing major over at San Francisco State University I was exploring such options, I purchased the excellent StorySpace software thinking that perhaps the web or a hypertext environment was the right way to go, only to be disappointed at the limitations. (The software is excellent for what it is capable of, even if it didn't fit the bill in my aspirations).

The conclusions that I drew are financially unreachable at this time. As well as the age-old problem that I think any interactive fiction will ever have: lack of interest. What I've always wanted to do is create locations much like Disneyland rides that tell a story interactively with a participant using computer projections and robotics, possibly with the interaction of psychedelic substances to help prime the "reader" for their experience.

Alas, I will probably never feel fufilled creatively as my ideas have no possibility for ever coming into fruition. (More on these ideas here).

It's a chicken/egg problem. Those of us who are but poor artists can't realize their dreams without heavy investment, and cannot get the heavy investment without an interested public to interact with. And an interest public cannot exist until the artistry is to be seen.

Further reading:

Hypertext 2.0

Writing Space

Eastgate Fiction

Temporality of Hypertext Fiction

Those links again, done right:
http://www.eastgate.com/catalog/Funhouse.html
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0285.html
http://www.kith.org/logos/wander/10.west/Buddy.htm l

Open source offerings in this area are slim to none, and I've tried everything I can get my hands on. The best I've found is KeyNote, a Windows-only tabbed notebook/hierarchical outliner. I recently converted all my text-file notes over to KeyNote, and found it to be a sweet little package. Highly recommended, although it doesn't really meet any of your other specifications (no hyperlinking, etc., outline-view only).

If you don't mind a web environment, Wikis provide easy editing and hyperlinking, but visualization is not their strong suit. If you like the idea of wikis, but don't want the web, and don't mind paying $12 for closed-source, WikidPad is an excellent, flexible, Windows-only option (and mildly extendable with an embedded Python interpreter). Combines a tree/outline view and Wiki-like syntax & automatic hyperlinking.

If you don't mind closed source, The Literary Machine provides a lot of power in a Windows environment. The basic version was free last I checked, though he's ceased development on it in favor of the Pro version ($20), which is being actively developed and integrates a number of new features (but I haven't tried it yet). It organizes everything based on a non-hierarchical keyword association system, and while it takes some getting used to (and can be downright messy sometimes), it does allow for the discovery of connections between notes that you might not have put together otherwise.

If you don't mind closed source, paying through the nose ($145), and OS X, then there is one app which fits all of your other qualifications: Eastgate's Tinderbox has powerful hyperlinking, programmable agents, RSS and web integration, powerful search, graphical visualization, and plenty more. To tell you the truth, my next computer will probably be a Mac because of this one, though a Windows version is on the horizon (was slated for an early 2004 release, but looks like it's slipped back to Real Soon Now). This has been the sleeper hit of the past couple years--everyone who uses it raves about it, but it's relatively unknown.

Open source offerings in this area are slim to none, and I've tried everything I can get my hands on. The best I've found is KeyNote, a Windows-only tabbed notebook/hierarchical outliner. I recently converted all my text-file notes over to KeyNote, and found it to be a sweet little package. Highly recommended, although it doesn't really meet any of your other specifications (no hyperlinking, etc., outline-view only).

If you don't mind a web environment, Wikis provide easy editing and hyperlinking, but visualization is not their strong suit. If you like the idea of wikis, but don't want the web, and don't mind paying $12 for closed-source, WikidPad is an excellent, flexible, Windows-only option (and mildly extendable with an embedded Python interpreter). Combines a tree/outline view and Wiki-like syntax & automatic hyperlinking.

If you don't mind closed source, The Literary Machine provides a lot of power in a Windows environment. The basic version was free last I checked, though he's ceased development on it in favor of the Pro version ($20), which is being actively developed and integrates a number of new features (but I haven't tried it yet). It organizes everything based on a non-hierarchical keyword association system, and while it takes some getting used to (and can be downright messy sometimes), it does allow for the discovery of connections between notes that you might not have put together otherwise.

If you don't mind closed source, paying through the nose ($145), and OS X, then there is one app which fits all of your other qualifications: Eastgate's Tinderbox has powerful hyperlinking, programmable agents, RSS and web integration, powerful search, graphical visualization, and plenty more. To tell you the truth, my next computer will probably be a Mac because of this one, though a Windows version is on the horizon (was slated for an early 2004 release, but looks like it's slipped back to Real Soon Now). This has been the sleeper hit of the past couple years--everyone who uses it raves about it, but it's relatively unknown.

If you want to hack a computer together, visit your local nameless commdtity computer shop, go download some slackware or debian iso's, and get busy. Better yet, why not run Plan 9 on it?

And especially people do this kind of stuff just to see if they can. I'm not that type -- but most Slashdotters are!

You sit down a user and teach him some apps, what a file system is and how to navigate. Fine. Now he creates a bunch of documents, contacts and such. All his documents are organized nicely, and contacts and such. Now lets say he wants to organize a conference.

He has to assemble the data. He has to go through one tree, get his documents together go through another tree, find all the people he knows, filter through them, and again in an address book. Throughout the maintenance he has to go through a process of grouping it together. Now lets say he meets people and adds them to his contact list. He has to go through a process of creating a new list of people related to the party, but not the initial invitation. Eventually, he decides to go work for one of these people, now he has to put a relation in that he is working with them.

Eventually, you create a lot of shortcuts in windows. Shortcuts to shortcuts to shortcuts. Now lets say you want to search all the people you work with you met at this party. You have to start navigating.

Now lets take the other extreme. Everything in a database. You have to design a schema for everything, but a query is really quick.

What I'm thinking of, is a generic interface, that may use a database underneath, or a filesystem, that allows you to easily put and pull relations of data quickly and show them to you easily. Not necessarily in a 3d interface, but a nice interface.

Someone pointed out Tinderbox Now take something like this, except instead of notes, put documents and application files there (no, not dll's, spreadsheets, contacts, your c code, recipies). Then give the ability to relate them, group them and name the relations. Finally be able to search the relations, groups and the content themselves. Now you have a knowledge system, much like the human mind. I can easily pull up data on say, love, or the perl projects i've done with certain criteria.

I don't care about the underlying technology, I'm thinking of it from a requirements level downward.

Are you talking about Tinderbox? It sounds like your talking about Tinderbox.

Please ignore the last paragraph of my last comment.

. o O ( Preview button...oh, yeah! )

You could probably build something on top of Zope (which comes with a ZWiki component), and might find gZigZag interesting.

Tinderbox, and Userland's products, though not open/free, are two other platforms to build on or learn from.

A great (and free) hypertext story is available here

A great (and free) hypertext story is available here

The preface to Writing Space reads:

You may make as many electronic copies of this text as you wish. You may distribute these copies to anyone under any terms. You may give the disks away or sell them. If you can convince someone to pay you for an electronic copy of this text, take the money.

This was written in the late 80's, and sounds a lot like the GPL applied to a piece of scholarship.

Incidently, Writing Space is availible from Eastgate Systems in electronic form for $10US. :-)

The preface to Writing Space reads:

You may make as many electronic copies of this text as you wish. You may distribute these copies to anyone under any terms. You may give the disks away or sell them. If you can convince someone to pay you for an electronic copy of this text, take the money.

This was written in the late 80's, and sounds a lot like the GPL applied to a piece of scholarship.

Incidently, Writing Space is availible from Eastgate Systems in electronic form for $10US. :-)

The preface to Writing Space reads:

You may make as many electronic copies of this text as you wish. You may distribute these copies to anyone under any terms. You may give the disks away or sell them. If you can convince someone to pay you for an electronic copy of this text, take the money.

This was written in the late 80's, and sounds a lot like the GPL applied to a piece of scholarship.

Incidently, Writing Space is availible from Eastgate Systems in electronic form for $10US. :-)