I feel like writing a Thesis is a process. A process of reading, writing, rewriting. Reading, writing, rewriting. Editing, reviewing, rewriting.
My project will be dealing with hypertext and looking at its history, and then using its application to create a hypertext system within a Tiddlywiki. During the next week, I will be doing some heavy reading by Ted Nelson. I ordered a highly anticipated (thanks Steve!), and hard-to-find book called Literary Machines: The report on, and of, Project Xanadu concerning word processing, electronic publishing, hypertext, thinkertoys, tomorrow's intellectual revolution, and certain other topics including knowledge, education and freedom (1981), Mindful Press, Sausalito, California. It should be arriving by the weekend.
Beyond that immediate reading, I will also review a web site called HypertextNow that reveals the latest publications about hypertext and some various remarks on hypertext from 1996-1999. This dated information will be valuable on the heels of the explosion of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee in the early 1990's. Some other authors I intend to read another week (not this one) include Vannevar Bush and his famous July 1949 As We May Think article; and Tim Berners-Lee. Both are considered pioneers in hypertext, of different generations and application.
So in conclusion, I will be starting at the beginning. A good read.
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Ambitious week, happy reading. You may find it helpful to take some extensive notes on Nelson, perhaps building a set of quotes in a tiddlywiki, and trying to tag the quotes.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about the relationship between hypertext and tagging -- is building a hypertextual link a whole lot different than assigning a tag? Read, especially, Sections 6-8 of the Bush article (which, by the way, can be found on the Atlantic site - www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush). The same intellectual development in hypertext may now be happening within the "Tagging" discussions...