 Twenty years ... and counting 
Mark Bernstein sites a now-ancient essay on the then-future of hypertext. He's right: we haven't advanced markedly in 'getting it' since 1988.
 7/20/2010; 9:18:12 AM.
Twenty years ... and counting
Mark Bernstein sites a non-ancient essay on the then-future of hypertext. He's right: we haven't advanced markedly in 'getting it' since 1988. The hypertext use-case on page 623 illustrates how a young writer got it and used it.
7/19/2010; 11:38:03 PM.
Twenty years ... and counting
Mark Bernstein cites a now-ancient essay on the then-future of hypertext, noting that we really haven't made much, if any, advance in understanding since then. Page 623 of the essay neatly captures a simple, but profound, use-case of spatial hypertext by a young student writer.
7/19/2010; 11:31:15 PM.
Twenty years ... and counting
Mark Bernstein cites a now-ancient essay on the then-future of hypertext, noting that we really haven't made much, if any, advance in understanding since then. Page 623 of the essay neatly captures a simple, but profound, use-case of spatial hypertext by a young student writer.
7/19/2010; 11:30:10 PM.
Twenty years ... and counting
Mark Bernstein cites a now-ancient essay on the then-future of hypertext, noting that we really haven't made much, if any, advance in understanding since then. Page 623 of the essay neatly captures a simple, but profound, use-case of spatial hypertext by a young student writer.
7/19/2010; 11:20:41 PM.
Twenty years ... and counting
Mark Bernstein cites a now-ancient essay on the then-future of hypertext, noting that we really haven't made much, if any, advance in understanding since then. Page 623 of the essay neatly captures a simple, but profound, use-case of spatial hypertext by a young student writer.
7/19/2010; 11:19:55 PM.
Twenty years ... and counting
Mark Bernstein cites a now-ancient essay on the then-future of hypertext, noting that we really haven't made much, if any, advance in understanding since then. Page 623 of the essay neatly captures a simple, but profound, use-case of spatial hypertext by a young student writer.
7/19/2010; 11:19:24 PM.
Twenty years ... and counting
Mark Bernstein cites a now-ancient essay on the then-future of hypertext, noting that we really haven't made much, if any, advance in understanding since then. Page 623 of the essay neatly captures a simple, but profound, use-case of spatial hypertext by a young student writer.
7/19/2010; 11:19:13 PM.
Conventions
I wanted to make sure my use of the word isn't just semantic noise. This for convention from dictionary.com surely fits:
"A practice or procedure widely observed in a group, especially to facilitate social interaction; a custom: the convention of shaking hands".
7/16/2010; 8:36:17 PM.
Closer to the beginning than the end
We forget that our technologies enshrine mere conventions as though they were inherent within some inevitable cosmic order.
Hundreds of millions of users regard the html aref link as the only way to associate online texts. To the contrary, these represented a radical over-simplification of richer concepts well-understand decades before by Vannevar Bush and more recently by Ted Nelson.
But when it comes to online writing (individual and collaborative), including the design and implementation of both infrastructure and tools that support writers, we are surely closer to the beginning than the end of conventions closure. Or, at least, we had better be.
No doubt, the marketplace, which never finds technique interesting per se, but only as a means to accomplish a task, decides by sheer mass usage what will count as a permanent convention. The drop-dead simplicity of unidirectional links 'translates' across cultures everywhere. Developers should submit humbly to the adoption practices of their users, rather than herd them into virtual re-education camps which impose an abstract technical ideal.
Nothing needs to be pulled down that has found a community (e.g., blogging tools). Anyway, it cannot be done (cf RSS and the doomed efforts to 'improve' it ...). However, it is just now becoming possible to think deeply about what has been learned over the past twenty years and, perhaps, to craft a distinct advance on the Web's first generaiton of virtual 'pencils' and 'teypwriters'.
Talk of ebook readers are all the rage, but what we need even more are devices, tools and, yes, robust conventions for those who write for such readers. Which means: just about everyone.
7/15/2010; 10:47:01 PM.
What a long strange trip ...
Though I have written often for my bread in the past, my blogging has been oddly transient and more often shared with a small circle of private readers than with the virtual public.
I haven't done this intentionally. Each blog has addressed something of importance to me (and/or others) for as long as needed.
Manila/Frontier kicked off my blogging life ca 1998 or so. Revolutionary.
Radio Userland demanded and received serious use, but didn't quite fit my writer's hand as well as Manila.
Moveable Type held a place at my desk for a while, though I was never a fan. Clunky.
I have used, left and returned to WordPress several times. If I were a Web developer, it would be a part of my toolbox. As a writer, I have mixed feelings.
For four years, I have been an enthusiastic user of ExpressionEngine. Still am.
For even longer, I have been a passionate user of Tinderbox. It can be used for blogging easily, but I have never done so.
Why such a variety of tools? Why am I so delighted to explore Scripting2 since I am quite pleased with EE and Tinderbox?
Soon ...
7/10/2010; 8:19:57 PM.
Hello, Scripting2 World!
Installation has been reasonably straightforward. Shades of Frontier (of course)!
I received a 'no user' error message window on first display of the Scripting 2 editor which disappeared after 60 seconds or so. No harm, no foul.
Ready to roll ....
7/7/2010; 10:25:17 PM.
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