I've been thinking about this for some time - my job involves being in the team looking after a big university data centre(s) and for some time now we have been seeking solutions for documenting our networks, applications, topology etc.
So far we've deployed nagios (http://www.nagios.org) for monitoring and rolled our own blog for notes / comments on servers and services.
I would like to do some more integration, possibly utilising Rackview (http://rackview.sourceforge.net). DCML (http://www.dcml.org) showed some promise but now seems dead.
If anyone is further down this path, I'd really appreciate some input, otherwise I can release the first stage design specs from our project and see if we can build a community around that.
I have a Solio [www.solio.com] - it is sold as charging via solar power, but you can also charge it from the mains - it comes with specialised tips (iPod, phones etc), but also a standard USB female - great for when you don't have a laptop around or, indeed, no outlet socket at all:)
I Highly recommend them both for their utility and ecological low impact.
Greets!
http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html
The Sloan MouseSite has better video where you can actually read what Doug has on the screen!
I've been lucky enough to see this video with commentary by Doug - he's still around, still has ideas relevant and ahead of most of the rest of the computing world and is always glad to discuss his ideas with people.
You can find out his current plans at the Bootstrap Institute: http://www.bootstrap.org/
Couple of things - first off I have a 4MP compact digital camera and a 2MP (Sony K750i) camera phone.
The camera comes with me to 'occasions' - places where I know I'm going to take photos (outings, birthdays, family stuff, etc) - it has a real optical zoom, 1Gb Sd card and flash.
My phone is with me all the time and so I can take photos of things that catch my eye - landscapes, unexpected events, something fun that happens in the pub - it has only a digital zoom,.5 Gb Memory Stick Pro Duo, no flash (but you can buy one)
And, you know, for outdoor, non-zoomed stuff, the results a re about the same. I'm not a camera buff, nor a pro and I think that is the point - to those of us that just want a memory recording device that will adequately capture an event most phones are up to the task.
And so back to the point of my title - that is certainly my experience IN THE UK and EUROPE - having spent sopme time in the US they are WAY behind when it comes to phone tech - seems to be the result of a bad market and provder model. Anyway - phones in the UK and Europe are certainly up to being useful, usually free with a contract and do the job. I wish more article writers would remember or explicitly state US != World
"The paper considers possible 'future everyday hypertext systems'. To ground the discussion, we look first at the functional and conceptual definitions of hypertext that have evolved in the hypertext research community. We then consider these definitions against the Web, the best known current everyday hypertext, but one that the hypertext community has regarded as only partially a hypertext system at best. We propose, however, that a full, rich hypertext is alive and well and living in an equally successful everyday system: that system is email. We look at how email meets the criteria, both functionally and conceptually, for rich hypertext. "
As I pointed out on my previous post http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166183&cid= 13863838 you need some understanding of the history of all of this - Bush in 1945, Nelson in 1960 and Engelbart on 1968 are the originators of all that you dismiss as an idea "that can be explained in two sentences".
These three people are the originators of modern computing.
"Tons of people" may have addressed the problems, but they're only thinking about them because of the three people named above.
Perhaps a more informed and enlightened view of the history of computing may help you to more objectively contribute to the discussion?
Good luck getting hold of Computer Lib - I think the only copies not in private hands are in Ted's storage unit and a couple I have in my office to show interested parties.
In the original Xanadu design, every single key stroke went into the permascroll - and documents were pointers to spans in the permascroll. Every version of a document could therefore be summoned by the correction collation of the appropriate spans.
It's a lot more complicated than that (enfilades and tumbler maths, etc.), but that's a good approximation of Ted's continuing vision as well - as these spans could also be transcluded to allow documents to be built out of other documents and so on, with no loss of the original context.
feel free to ask for more detail.
Ermm - I'm not snotty - I got over the flu two weeks ago!
Sorry if some of my language was a little too much, I just found some of the tone of the conversation a bit extreme, given the opinion to fact ratio going around.
And I find a refreshing drink does help with thinking......
It's generally accepted in the [hypertext research] community that the idea of linked documents comes from Vannevar Bush's post war article "as We May Think", the phrase "hypertext" was coined by Ted in 1960 and Doug's demo of NLS in 1968 also contains examples of linking and interconnection - more deails and links in my first post on this at: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166183&cid= 13863838
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!
So, first things first - I met Ted at The ACM Hypertext conference in Aarhuus in 2001. He gave a keynote and a workshop on ZigZag - which at once seemed totally obvious and very powerful. I played with the ideas for a bit, showed some things to him whilst he was a visting professor at Southampton and have worked with him here at the University of Nottingham before he went off to his current job, at The Oxford Internet Institutehttp://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/. It is a priviledge and an honour to be able to call Ted my friend - he has an incredible mind, a huge vision, and yes, he can code!
I've been working on using ZigZag to represent the deep interrelationships inherent in biological information. We've also been working on ZigZag as a phone/PIM interface and analysing the underlying structures. If you're interested in finding out more, read our published work:
Moore, A.; Goulding, J.O.; Brailsford, T.J.; & Ashman, H. (2004). Practical Applitudes: case studies of applications of the ZigZag hypermedia system. Proceedings of Fifteenth ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, August 9-13, 2004, Santa Cruz, CA, USA pp 143-152 (http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1012807.1012851)
Moore, A.; & Brailsford, T.J. (2004). Unified Hyperstructures for Bioinformatics: Escaping the Application Prison. Journal of Digital Information: Special Issue on Future Visions of Common-Use Hypertext. Vol.5, Issue 1. Article No. 254, 2004-05-27 (http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v05/i01/Moor e/)
Ted has also published a long paper on the fundamentals of ZigZag:
This is 'Hyperland' - a lost BBC documentary. Unfortunately the BBC doesn't have the rights to all the material, so can't re-release it *8-(
It does have an IMDB entry: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0188677/ and a precis on Douglas' site: http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/hype.html
Ted has the rights to his appearence in it, so occasionally will show those segments in one of his talks.
It also featured some wacky stuff from the SF MultiMedia Lab, NASA and many other interesting things which have since fallen by the way.
Adam
Post-Doc Researcher, ZigZag for Bioinformatics
Well, a couple of supervisors in the Uni where I work (as a researcher, NOT tech support) have decided that linux is the way forward for their research groups - so anyone that arrives at the group gets a nice shiny new linux desktop - even if they've never used any UN*X before in their life - now the kicker - our Uni doesn't support any OS other than their current favourite current flavour of windows - so who gets asked to do all the support and training? That's right - me. After a while of figuring out it couldn't hurt to help people out I put together the following form - which the guys take with then the next time they meet their supervisor- I release it now as free to use for the community:
---- Today I did the following for your linux users: A long list of things - usually including one install, one reconfig, software install and some hardware driver issues.
Please circle one of the following as your prefered method of payment: - Shiny new gadgetry - Server-class hardware you've decided not to use since you got that shiny new 4 processor machine on the latest grant - Beer / Malt whiskey - Cold hard cash
----
Works quite well!
PS - weirdest thing I ever got asked by my dad: "This linux thing you installed doesn't work" After a long discussion about the dual boot facilities on his machine (he'd been interested in trying out linux and I'd put a basic install in a gig on his machine) I found out he had deleted the phone number from UKLinux - an ISP here in the UK that I'd installed when he was having probs using his own ISP! AAAggghhhh!
Well, our system may be suitable, if you want to take a longer view *8-)
We're currently developing WHURLE - Web-based Hierarchical Universal Reactive Learning Environment - a GPL'd XML-based open system. It runs on a servlet engine with XSLT (apache tomcat and cocoon recommended *8-). The development team comprises several people who have run major online courses, mostly using WebCT, and we're keen to avoid the same mistakes - to this end - all our content is stored as discrete XML 'chunks' of information, which are structured into a hierarchical lesson plan - we're developing adaptive filters at the mo, but if you just want to do non-adaptive, straight course delivery, it's ready now.
I said take a longer view, because, even though we have courses running in Nottingham,UK and Hong Kong, authoring at the moment is either done by hand in an XML editor, or using some crude web forms I knocked up - we are in the process of finishing a converter for most of our legacy material, which was developed for a program called Scholar's Desktop - so if any one has courses built using this, let me know and I can get you started real quick - for others, if you'd like to see a demo of the system, or contribute, please drop me an email.Convertors from other formats are in hand, but realistically will take some time.
Addressing some of the other issues posted here - we think SCORM is a good idea and will get round to doing something with it RSN *8-) We found in our previous courses that what makes online components a success is a 'critical mass' of online contributors - silent forums are the death of any system. As for peer review - we're actively looking at this, perhaps using something along the lines that sourceforge use - most active, highest rated and so on, rather than the karma/mod system used here.
Hope this is interesting to some people - get in touch with me if you'd like to chat further.
Adam Moore WHURLE Technical Lead University of Nottingham http://whurle.sf.net
I've just got a new Sony PEG-770C and it rocks - if you just use plain old blue memory sticks you can put what you like on them and trasfer up and down no probs (It helps if you have a Vaio with a memory stick slot, of course *8-) - really good battery life too!
I'm not sure about the white 'MagicGate' memory sticks - I think they have built-in protection?
The reason that 3D isn't popular or practical - paper. Our current metaphor for information derives from Xerox Parc, a PAPER company. A faithful emulation of an office desk is NOT the best way to represent the complex infoverse we live in.
And the current web is not the best way to represent it either. Go back to hypertextual research before the web - look at Guide, look at Microcosm, before the brain damage of HTML and Mosaic set in.
Even better, go and look at Xanadu and ZigZag - representing information and the relationships between individual pieces of it is a complex task, perhaps made harder by our current metaphors. See ANYTHING by Ted Nelson, such as his technical briefing at the latest Hypertext conference.Read Vannevar Bush's "As we may think"
I would argue that we don't need 3D browsers, but MULTIDIMENSIONAL infoviewers, that can let us define the relationships and properties that we are interested at any moment, AND LET US CHANGE THEM easily and intuitively - I still remember the only good part of Johnny Mnemonic - zooming around cyberspace - also, to a lesser degree Lawnmower Man.
This is the way forward, and we need to learn from the games industry - Look at Homeworld, Q3D, even Elite - these are the kind of intuitive navigational and representational metaphors we ned to adopt to allow people to create, browse, populate and interact with their information.
Let us be imaginative, and move forwards to a representation of information as something we can use, rather than something we write down.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been thinking about this for some time - my job involves being in the team looking after a big university data centre(s) and for some time now we have been seeking solutions for documenting our networks, applications, topology etc.
So far we've deployed nagios (http://www.nagios.org) for monitoring and rolled our own blog for notes / comments on servers and services.
I would like to do some more integration, possibly utilising Rackview (http://rackview.sourceforge.net). DCML (http://www.dcml.org) showed some promise but now seems dead.
If anyone is further down this path, I'd really appreciate some input, otherwise I can release the first stage design specs from our project and see if we can build a community around that.
Greets!
:)
I have a Solio [www.solio.com] - it is sold as charging via solar power, but you can also charge it from the mains - it comes with specialised tips (iPod, phones etc), but also a standard USB female - great for when you don't have a laptop around or, indeed, no outlet socket at all
I Highly recommend them both for their utility and ecological low impact.
Greets!
You mean Falcons Eye http://falconseye.sourceforge.net/
Raist
Greets! http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html The Sloan MouseSite has better video where you can actually read what Doug has on the screen! I've been lucky enough to see this video with commentary by Doug - he's still around, still has ideas relevant and ahead of most of the rest of the computing world and is always glad to discuss his ideas with people. You can find out his current plans at the Bootstrap Institute: http://www.bootstrap.org/
Couple of things - first off I have a 4MP compact digital camera and a 2MP (Sony K750i) camera phone.
.5 Gb Memory Stick Pro Duo, no flash (but you can buy one)
The camera comes with me to 'occasions' - places where I know I'm going to take photos (outings, birthdays, family stuff, etc) - it has a real optical zoom, 1Gb Sd card and flash.
My phone is with me all the time and so I can take photos of things that catch my eye - landscapes, unexpected events, something fun that happens in the pub - it has only a digital zoom,
And, you know, for outdoor, non-zoomed stuff, the results a re about the same. I'm not a camera buff, nor a pro and I think that is the point - to those of us that just want a memory recording device that will adequately capture an event most phones are up to the task.
And so back to the point of my title - that is certainly my experience IN THE UK and EUROPE - having spent sopme time in the US they are WAY behind when it comes to phone tech - seems to be the result of a bad market and provder model. Anyway - phones in the UK and Europe are certainly up to being useful, usually free with a contract and do the job. I wish more article writers would remember or explicitly state US != World
For whatever other people suggest, I can heartily recommend the solio http://solio.com/html/index.html for powering them through thick and thin.
Greets!
In the Journal special issue I edited a while ago was a very interesting paper on just this subject.
http://jodi.tamu.edu/Articles/v05/i01/schraefel/
"The paper considers possible 'future everyday hypertext systems'. To ground the discussion, we look first at the functional and conceptual definitions of hypertext that have evolved in the hypertext research community. We then consider these definitions against the Web, the best known current everyday hypertext, but one that the hypertext community has regarded as only partially a hypertext system at best. We propose, however, that a full, rich hypertext is alive and well and living in an equally successful everyday system: that system is email. We look at how email meets the criteria, both functionally and conceptually, for rich hypertext. "
Greets! I ran a panel on this in 2003 at the Hyertext conference [http://www.ht03.org/panels.html#panel1 ] I think Pete came closest to getting it right - predicting a 'hot or not' for the general web - now see Digg [http://www.digg.com/ ]. We also ran a special issue linked to the panel in JoDI [http://jodi.tamu.edu/?vol=5&iss=1 ]
See my previous post for the rebuttal of the wired article and much more useful info
= 13863838
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166183&cid
As I pointed out on my previous post http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166183&cid= 13863838 you need some understanding of the history of all of this - Bush in 1945, Nelson in 1960 and Engelbart on 1968 are the originators of all that you dismiss as an idea "that can be explained in two sentences".
These three people are the originators of modern computing.
"Tons of people" may have addressed the problems, but they're only thinking about them because of the three people named above.
Perhaps a more informed and enlightened view of the history of computing may help you to more objectively contribute to the discussion?
Literary machines is available from Eastgate Publishing - see my other post: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166183&cid= 13863838
Good luck getting hold of Computer Lib - I think the only copies not in private hands are in Ted's storage unit and a couple I have in my office to show interested parties.
In the original Xanadu design, every single key stroke went into the permascroll - and documents were pointers to spans in the permascroll. Every version of a document could therefore be summoned by the correction collation of the appropriate spans. It's a lot more complicated than that (enfilades and tumbler maths, etc.), but that's a good approximation of Ted's continuing vision as well - as these spans could also be transcluded to allow documents to be built out of other documents and so on, with no loss of the original context. feel free to ask for more detail.
Ermm - I'm not snotty - I got over the flu two weeks ago! Sorry if some of my language was a little too much, I just found some of the tone of the conversation a bit extreme, given the opinion to fact ratio going around. And I find a refreshing drink does help with thinking......
Ted's reply to this (and other useful info) here: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166183&cid= 13863838
Greets!
= 13863838
It's generally accepted in the [hypertext research] community that the idea of linked documents comes from Vannevar Bush's post war article "as We May Think", the phrase "hypertext" was coined by Ted in 1960 and Doug's demo of NLS in 1968 also contains examples of linking and interconnection - more deails and links in my first post on this at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166183&cid
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!
Greets!
t .ac.uk_923.html)
r e/)
o n/
So, first things first - I met Ted at The ACM Hypertext conference in Aarhuus in 2001. He gave a keynote and a workshop on ZigZag - which at once seemed totally obvious and very powerful. I played with the ideas for a bit, showed some things to him whilst he was a visting professor at Southampton and have worked with him here at the University of Nottingham before he went off to his current job, at The Oxford Internet Institutehttp://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/. It is a priviledge and an honour to be able to call Ted my friend - he has an incredible mind, a huge vision, and yes, he can code!
I've been working on using ZigZag to represent the deep interrelationships inherent in biological information. We've also been working on ZigZag as a phone/PIM interface and analysing the underlying structures. If you're interested in finding out more, read our published work:
Moore, A.; Goulding, J.O.; Brailsford, T.J.; & Ashman, H. (2004). Practical Applitudes: case studies of applications of the ZigZag hypermedia system. Proceedings of Fifteenth ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, August 9-13, 2004, Santa Cruz, CA, USA pp 143-152 (http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1012807.1012851)
Moore, A.; Nelson, T.; Brailsford, T.J.; & Ashman, H. (2004). ZigZag for Bioinformatics. Poster Proceedings of ISMB/ECCB 2004, July 31-August 4, 2004, Glasgow, UK (http://www.iscb.org/ismb2004/posters/axmATcs.not
Moore, A.; & Brailsford, T.J. (2004). Unified Hyperstructures for Bioinformatics: Escaping the Application Prison. Journal of Digital Information: Special Issue on Future Visions of Common-Use Hypertext. Vol.5, Issue 1. Article No. 254, 2004-05-27 (http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v05/i01/Moo
Ted has also published a long paper on the fundamentals of ZigZag:
A Cosmology for a Different Computer Universe: Data Model, Mechanisms, Virtual Machine and Visualization Infrastructure
http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v05/i01/Nels
Finally, come visit our website (link in my profile), look around, ask questions - we're always interested in new ideas!
Adam Moore, Postdoc Researcher, ZigZag for Bioinformatics
Greets!
It really is a poisinous, nasty piece of hatchet journalism, wearing nice clothes.
John's full reply is still archived and available at: http://xanadu.com.au/mail/xanadu/msg00258.html.
Ted's reply is also available:
http://xanadu.com.au/wolfsbane
And the c2 page http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TheCurseOfXanadu
Adam Moore, Postdoc Researcher, ZigZag for Bioinformatics
You mean like here: http://www.udanax.com/?
Also google for Udanax - there are projects blossoming!
Adam Moore, Post-Doc Researcher, ZigZag for Bioinformatics
This is 'Hyperland' - a lost BBC documentary. Unfortunately the BBC doesn't have the rights to all the material, so can't re-release it *8-( It does have an IMDB entry: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0188677/ and a precis on Douglas' site: http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/hype.html Ted has the rights to his appearence in it, so occasionally will show those segments in one of his talks. It also featured some wacky stuff from the SF MultiMedia Lab, NASA and many other interesting things which have since fallen by the way. Adam Post-Doc Researcher, ZigZag for Bioinformatics
Greets!
Well, a couple of supervisors in the Uni where I work (as a researcher, NOT tech support) have decided that linux is the way forward for their research groups - so anyone that arrives at the group gets a nice shiny new linux desktop - even if they've never used any UN*X before in their life - now the kicker - our Uni doesn't support any OS other than their current favourite current flavour of windows - so who gets asked to do all the support and training? That's right - me. After a while of figuring out it couldn't hurt to help people out I put together the following form - which the guys take with then the next time they meet their supervisor- I release it now as free to use for the community:
----
Today I did the following for your linux users:
A long list of things - usually including one install, one reconfig, software install and some hardware driver issues.
Please circle one of the following as your prefered method of payment:
- Shiny new gadgetry
- Server-class hardware you've decided not to use since you got that shiny new 4 processor machine on the latest grant
- Beer / Malt whiskey
- Cold hard cash
----
Works quite well!
PS - weirdest thing I ever got asked by my dad:
"This linux thing you installed doesn't work"
After a long discussion about the dual boot facilities on his machine (he'd been interested in trying out linux and I'd put a basic install in a gig on his machine) I found out he had deleted the phone number from UKLinux - an ISP here in the UK that I'd installed when he was having probs using his own ISP! AAAggghhhh!
Raist
Greets!
Well, our system may be suitable, if you want to take a longer view *8-)
We're currently developing WHURLE - Web-based Hierarchical Universal Reactive Learning Environment - a GPL'd XML-based open system. It runs on a servlet engine with XSLT (apache tomcat and cocoon recommended *8-). The development team comprises several people who have run major online courses, mostly using WebCT, and we're keen to avoid the same mistakes - to this end - all our content is stored as discrete XML 'chunks' of information, which are structured into a hierarchical lesson plan - we're developing adaptive filters at the mo, but if you just want to do non-adaptive, straight course delivery, it's ready now.
I said take a longer view, because, even though we have courses running in Nottingham,UK and Hong Kong, authoring at the moment is either done by hand in an XML editor, or using some crude web forms I knocked up - we are in the process of finishing a converter for most of our legacy material, which was developed for a program called Scholar's Desktop - so if any one has courses built using this, let me know and I can get you started real quick - for others, if you'd like to see a demo of the system, or contribute, please drop me an email.Convertors from other formats are in hand, but realistically will take some time.
Addressing some of the other issues posted here - we think SCORM is a good idea and will get round to doing something with it RSN *8-) We found in our previous courses that what makes online components a success is a 'critical mass' of online contributors - silent forums are the death of any system. As for peer review - we're actively looking at this, perhaps using something along the lines that sourceforge use - most active, highest rated and so on, rather than the karma/mod system used here.
Hope this is interesting to some people - get in touch with me if you'd like to chat further.
Adam Moore
WHURLE Technical Lead
University of Nottingham
http://whurle.sf.net
I've just got a new Sony PEG-770C and it rocks - if you just use plain old blue memory sticks you can put what you like on them and trasfer up and down no probs (It helps if you have a Vaio with a memory stick slot, of course *8-) - really good battery life too!
I'm not sure about the white 'MagicGate' memory sticks - I think they have built-in protection?
Raist
Greets!
t ml
t er/bushf.htm
The reason that 3D isn't popular or practical - paper. Our current metaphor for information derives from Xerox Parc, a PAPER company. A faithful emulation of an office desk is NOT the best way to represent the complex infoverse we live in.
And the current web is not the best way to represent it either. Go back to hypertextual research before the web - look at Guide, look at Microcosm, before the brain damage of HTML and Mosaic set in.
Even better, go and look at Xanadu and ZigZag - representing information and the relationships between individual pieces of it is a complex task, perhaps made harder by our current metaphors. See ANYTHING by Ted Nelson, such as his technical briefing at the latest Hypertext conference.Read Vannevar Bush's "As we may think"
I would argue that we don't need 3D browsers, but MULTIDIMENSIONAL infoviewers, that can let us define the relationships and properties that we are interested at any moment, AND LET US CHANGE THEM easily and intuitively - I still remember the only good part of Johnny Mnemonic - zooming around cyberspace - also, to a lesser degree Lawnmower Man.
This is the way forward, and we need to learn from the games industry - Look at Homeworld, Q3D, even Elite - these are the kind of intuitive navigational and representational metaphors we ned to adopt to allow people to create, browse, populate and interact with their information.
Let us be imaginative, and move forwards to a representation of information as something we can use, rather than something we write down.
Links:
Microcosm:(Home) http://www.iam.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
(Review)http://www.man.ac.uk/MVC/SIMA/mcosm/toc.h
Guide: http://www.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0142.html
HyperText Conference: http://www.ht01.org/
GZigZag - http://gzigzag.sf.net
Xanadu: http://www.udanax.com
http://www.xanadu.com
As We May Think: http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/compu
The electronic labyrinth - a good intro to hypertext, slanted toward literature http://www.iath.virginia.edu/elab/elab.html