- Theodor Nelson
- Originator of "hypertext" concept, but original idea went further than the term as we now know it
- "a body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could not be conveniently presented or represented on paper"
- modular type of system that goes beyond simple text based links: linked structures of information in a more abstract form
Sort of a precursor to the modern search engine optimized web where everything is linked via tags, but takes this idea further to surpass what became the standard of links via text. It seems like we are finally catching up to Nelson's concepts in our current generation of the web, where user created tags help us to identify an ever evolving user generated database. The way that these databases are visually organized is still very simple though, and mirror methods that have been used forever in text based mediums on paper. For instance, upon doing a Google search, we are simply given a traditional list of results in the form of hyperlinks rather than a more comprehensive visual representation of the results. Not sure what this representation would be, or if it has already been attempted...I wonder if the way in which we perceive information might evolve to become something beyond our current text based world?
No comments:
Post a Comment