Hypertext & complexity LO4909

Dunbar Aitkens (caploc@PEAK.ORG)
Mon, 15 Jan 1996 23:33:41 -0800 (PST)

Replying to LO4874 --

I do not have the reading background described as the basis for discussion
on this list, but found the articles on hypertext in relation to hierarchy
interesting and hope I am not misinterpreting the sense in which they
meant to be taken. I have for a long time, on my own, been interested in
lightly formal and minimalist rules in conversation, as similar in many
ways to, say, jazz improvisation.

Al Selvin wrtes, Fri, 12 Jan 1196

> Used creatively,hypertext can subvert the whole notion of a hierarchy ...
>
> For instance, we have created fairly large collections of information
> about particular projects in hypertext databases. These databases are
> structured so that there are multiple organizing views to the same
> information. These include (among others) "project management" views,
> which are concerned with timelines, deliverables, and status; "modeling"
> views, which organize information about the problem domain in structured
> maps; and "issue-based" or topic views, which contain or point to
> free-form discussions about issues of importance to the project. All the
> views contain appropriate links into each other, so that there are many
> ways to get at the information that the project team has produced.
>

I would be interested, and I gather from the discussion here that others
would be also, in knowing if anyone has a recommendation of a database
over the internet that illustration those methods or comes close to doing
that.

For my own particular concern I am not sure just how to apply the ideas
yet. but I think the example(s) would almost have to much help to me in
applying hypertext to the mapping of conversation. I have for some time
been developing a group creativity game that from its beginning several
years ago has been played face to face. Now I would like to include the
option of it taking place among people connecting to it from their
terminals, over the internet, say.

At the home page whose URL is given below you are details on my own game
project and related ones of other people's, especially ones related to a
study of Hermann Hesse's novel, _The Glass Bead Game_. The novel I notice
to be behind a number of games and special formats being worked on lately
to assist coperative thinking, ideas, and synthesis, and the a community
like the novels fictional academic community with its various disciplines
brought together under the sway of the game. I wonder if it is just or
mostly because of the phenomenal linking of information via the WEB that I
learn of them, or that there has for a long time been such an active
concern with the novel, not so much as such, but for the game, per se, in
it.

- Dunbar

--
Dunbar Aitkens
caploc@peak.org
http://www.peak.org