Hypertext

The computer world is not just technicality and razzle-dazzle. It is a continual war over software politics and paradigms. With ideas which are still radical, WE FIGHT ON.

Project Xanadu is a much-misunderstood initiative to create a different kind of computer world, based on a different kind of electronic document. (Conventional electronic documents-- PDF, Word, HTML-- simulate paper and are built around the concept of printout. Xanadu documents go where no printout can.)

HISTORY.
We came up with the idea of world-wide hypertext, and indirect documents, in 1960. It turned out that these ideas displeased many people.
Two major corporations made commitments to our system (Datapoint in 1982, Autodesk in 1988) but they were shot down by politics and infighting.

There have been four serious implementations--

- Hypertyper, 1972 (reached prototype)
- Xanadu Green, 1979 (reached prototype)
- Xanadu Gold, 1992
- XanaduSpace, 2008 (reached prototype)
Gold and Green were fouled by politics and infighting.
A mean-spirited personal attack on us in Wired magazine, discussing none of the concepts, fooled many people and still lingers in the air.

TECHNICAL CONCEPT: Indirect Documents
We can state the method several different ways:
- Indirect documents. Instead of packaging the content in a file, point to the parts on the net and bring them in from their original sources.
- Separate content from structure. The source content of xanadocs (text, audio, video) stay published. They may be simultaneously used in many ways, which stay interconnected.

- Leave the content where it is. To edit a movie by our method, you make a file of pointers. The user's client brings in the separate shots from wherever they are, assembles and shows them. This has the advantage of allowing many different uses of the same content, with links and overlays that can be used by many documents, since they all use the same addresses.

The simplest technical description is hither.
The current specification (Xanadu Purple) is hither. This dumbs down the rich addressing and capabilities of the earlier design.

An exhaustive technical description of Xanadu Green can be found in the book Literary Machines.

What is HyperText???????
Hypertext is text which is not constrained to be linear.

Hypertext is text which contains links to other texts. The term was coined by Ted Nelson around 1965 (see History ).

HyperMedia is a term used for hypertext which is not constrained to be text: it can include graphics, video and sound , for example. Apparently Ted Nelson was the first to use this term too.

Hypertext and HyperMedia are concepts, not products.

Hypertext editing System

The Hypertext Editing System, or HES, was an early hypertext research project conducted at Brown University in 1967 by Andries van Dam, Ted Nelson, and several Brown students. HES was a pioneering hypertext system that organized data into two main types: links and branching text. The branching text could automatically be arranged into menus and a point within a given area could also have an assigned name, called a label, and be accessed later by that name from the screen.


Hypertext Editing System (HES) IBM 2250 Display console – Brown University 1969
HES ran on an IBM System/360/50 mainframe computer, which was inefficient for the task of running such a revolutionary system. Although HES pioneered many modern hypertext concepts, its emphasis was on text formatting and printing. HES research was funded by IBM but the program was stopped around 1969. The program was used by NASA's Houston Manned Spacecraft Center for documentation on the Apollo space program (van Dam, 1988). HES was discontinued and replaced by the FRESS (File Retrieval and Editing System) project.

The Aspen Movie Map enabled the user to take a virtual tour through the city of Aspen, Colorado (that is, a form of surrogate travel). It is an early example of a hypermedia system.
A gyroscopic stabilizer with four 16mm stop-frame film cameras was mounted on top of a car with an encoder that triggered the cameras every ten feet. The distance was measured from an optical sensor attached to the hub of a bicycle wheel dragged behind the vehicle. The cameras were mounted in order to capture front, back, and side views as the car made its way through the city. Filming took place daily between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to minimize lighting discrepancies. The car was carefully driven down the center of every street in Aspen to enable registered match cuts.
The film was assembled into a collection of discontinuous scenes (one segment per view per city block) and then transferred to laserdisc, the analog-video precursor to modern digital optical disc storage technologies such as DVDs. A database was made that correlated the layout of the video on the disc with the two-dimensional street plan. Thus linked, the user was able to choose an arbitrary path through the city; the only restrictions being the necessity to stay in the center of the street; move ten feet between steps; and view the street from one of the four orthogonal views.
The interaction was controlled through a dynamically-generated menu overlaid on top of the video image: speed and viewing angle were modified by the selection of the appropriate icon through a touch-screen interface, harbinger of the ubiquitous interactive-video kiosk. Commands were sent from the client process handling the user input and overlay graphics to a server that accessed the database and controlled the laserdisc players. Another interface feature was the ability to touch any building in the current field of view, and, in a manner similar to the ISMAP feature of web browsers, jump to a façade of that building. Selected building contained additional data: e.g., interior shots, historical images, menus of restaurants, video interviews of city officials, etc., allowing the user to take a virtual tour through those buildings.


The facades of buildings were texture-mapped onto 3D models. The same 3D model was used to translate 2D screen coordinates into a database of buildings in order to provide hyperlinks to additional data.
In a later implementation, the metadata, which was in large part automatically extracted from the animation database, was encoded as a digital signal in the analog video. The data encoded in each frame contained all the necessary information to enable a full-featured surrogate-travel experience.
Another feature of the system was a navigation map that was overlaid above the horizon in the top of the frame; the map both served to indicate the user’s current position in the city (as well as a trace of streets previously explored) and to allow the user to jump to a two-dimensional city map, which allowed for an alternative way of moving through the city. Additional features of the map interface included the ability to jump back and forth between correlated aerial photographic and cartoon renderings with routes and landmarks highlighted; and to zoom in and out à la Charles Eames’s Powers of Ten film.
Aspen was filmed in early fall and winter. The user was able to in situ change seasons on demand while moving down the street or looking at a façade. A three-dimensional polygonal model of the city was also generated, using the Quick and Dirty Animation System (QADAS), which featured three-dimensional texture-mapping of the facades of landmark buildings, using an algorithm designed by Paul Heckbert. These computer-graphic images, also stored on the laserdisc, were also correlated to the video, enabling the user to view an abstract rendering of the city in real time.

The Aspen Movie Map

Information in an electronic space is often malleable and non-linear Identify and discuss the issues of authorship that this raises for both the designer and the user. Use a selection of relevant practice and theory in your answer

When we are talking about electronic space we are referring to, Computers, interface, internet, the lists are endless when talking about digital nature, Jean Baudrillard who’s work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism explains, “We used to live in the imaginary world of the mirror, of the divided self and the stage, of otherness and alienation. Today we live in the imaginary world of the screen, of the interface and the reduplication of contiguity and networks. All our machines are screens. We too have become screens. and the interactivity of men has become the interactivity of screens.Digital nature is non linear and malleable it can be changed, it can be viewed by many users, designers. It has become so complex compared from the early years compared with print which was static fixed and unchangeable. “The other characteristic of this digitization of information is it’s electronic nature, which makes the data processed both more virtual and non-material and also more ephemeral. This is substantially more than analogical predecessors. Information contained in this way is more easily transferable, reproducible, and modifiable, it takes up little room and weighs nothing, so transition is practically immediate” . In this essay I’m going to explain different types of electronic space and argue about who is the author? Three main points that I will raise will be Hypertext, hypermedia and Importing and exporting, they all related with electronic space, I’m going to compare early designers works based within that field which would help me to make my own decision in realizing the issues that occur for the user and designer.
In 1945 an was the birth of Hypertext, the American engineer Vannevar Bush came up with an idea of the Memex system, he created a method of storing information instead of using books, he thought of the creation of a microfilm system which stores the “text” using links which is exactly how the world wide web operates by linking information. Vannevar had a futuristic imagination coming up with this idea before the computers where actually invented, therefore unfortunately the system Memex wasn’t published but Bush stored information in his book explaining the concept. “Mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility, the memex would provide an enlarged intimate supplement to ones memory.
With the passing of time and new inventions 20 years had gone by Hypertext a term coined by Theodor. H, Nelson in the 1960’s refers also to a form of electronic text, a radically new information technology and a mode of publication . Ted Nelson found the Xanadu project, this was a massive database where people could store their information. Ted Neslon eventually came to a conclusion that within the electronic space you can store information which others can access, use and so on, therefore he believed that electronic space was non-linear and malleable. Within Nelsons findings of ordinary and hyper text, that reading has different meanings to it, you’re the author (creator) developing, analyzing, finding, researching information that is the privileges that you have with hypertext, you are the author of your journey. “Michael Foucault conceives of text in terms of networks and links. In the archaeology knowledge he points out that the frontiers of a book are never clear cut, ”because it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network….a network of references,” what Michel is saying that there is so many authors that collaborate in one that the user itself is the author, he/she is dissecting information and creating their own walk of information path, readers as in the users are in control of the order in which they look at the material in-front of them.
Lets talk about linear text compared to hypertext, linear text is the material that users read in books, newspapers and other printed material, the page layout is set in a general line of paragraphs and pages from beginning to the end Landow explains that thus where the printed text suggests self containment, Landow argues that the hypertext suggests integration, thereby correcting the artificial isolation of a text from its context . By have numerous links hypertext gives the user choices that push and guide them to become active and knowledgeable giving the user bit of authority given to the author to shape its texts and its meaning. In my own research and findings I feel that users always change text constantly in their own ways thus I feel that the user is the author of their information that they constantly change within hypertext.
Hypermedia is an extension of Hypertexts, this is where audio, graphics, video plain text combine creating a non-linear medium of information. Hypermedia is quite similar to hypertext, the only difference is that hypertext is working with a 2d object and hypermedia is working with 3d and hypermedia contains visual information.
The information that’s contained within the hypermedia application is generally organised in an orderly way. This is generally appointed using structural links. By grouping structural links this creates different types of application structures; an ordinary book has a linear structure and contains chapters that contain sections. Hypermedia generally tries to create appropriates structures, the structures are quite important for providing a form for the information space and their own location within the space. For the users this is very important as it help them to navigate in the information space. In hypermedia came the invention of the “Aspen Movie Map” designed by Andrew Lippman in 1978 this had allowed the users to take a virtual tour in the city Aspen, Colorado.
This was made with the use of four video cameras pointing in different directions taking video footage sticking on the back of a truck, once the footage was recorded the pictures were linked together and allowed the user to choose one of several paths in which to tour the city, The map both served to indicate the users current position in the city and also to allow the user to jump to a two dimensional city map, which allowed for an alternative way of moving through the city, other features it included was the ability to go back and fourth between correlated aerial photographic and cartoon renderings with routes and landmarks highlighted.
Aspen was filmed in early winter that meant that the user was able to change seasons on demand while moving down the streets. Eventually down the line “Aspen Movie Map” was used around the late 1970’s for a military application to help the soldiers by quickly familiarizing soldiers with their new territories. Computerized, interactive “movie maps” go back 35 years. Today’s connected computer power has turned tools that were once the province of artists and visionaries into a part of everyday life. Aspen was the first outlet presenting a new media world. Similar to the Aspen Movie Map” came Google maps, users could interact more with Google maps let users explore the world at street level, it has a route planner for travelling by foot and public transport and also includes an urban business locator for several countries around the world. George P. landed says “as reader move thought a web or network of texts, they continually shift the centre and hence the focus or organizing principle of their investigation and experience”.
From comparing both maps Google being more so of an updated version with more interactive tools, this has raised the question on who the author is, I personally feel that the user is the author, the user is the one creating its own virtual space deciding which place to go, see and view that is all of the users interaction with the 3d application.
Import /export makes data created in one application compatible with other applications. The essential condition that enables this new design logic and the resulting aesthetics is compatibility between files generated by different programs. In other words, “Import/export” commands of graphic, animation, video editing, compositing, and modelling software are historically more important than the individual programmes that these offer . Before the designers had their hand on software tools in the 1990s most work was produced with a standard technique for example graphic designers worked with a two dimensional space, before the designers started using import/export the work that was produced was fixed, linear and unchangeable, for graphic designers had to use offset printing and lithography which “inked image is transferred (or offset) from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface , the offset technique employs a flat image carrier on which the image to be printed obtains ink from ink rollers, while the non-printing area attracts a water-based film, keeping the non-printing areas ink-free, designers didn’t have much choice and work was not made easier as it is now, this makes me feel that around the 1990s the designers were the authors, now they can import their work using many software’s for example Indesign is a software that most graphic designers use and the software that gives pixel-perfect control over design and typography, creating elegant and engaging pages for print, tablets and other screens making this non-linear and malleable, Indesign is a faster and easier , improve productivity with time-savers such as the spit window, content collector ,tools, grayscale preview, easy access to recently used font, and more.
Here comes a notion that designers use more then one software, it’s not the tools that matter it’s the workflow process, generally a designer would create elements in one program, import it into another programme and so on until they come up with their final piece. Today a typical short film or a sequence may combine many such pairings within the same frame. The result is hybrid, intricate, complex and rich media language or rather numerous languages that share the basic logic of remixability . Designer Peter Andersons moving surnames, Northern Ireland Series 2 treble page spread for IT magazine is an example of import/export creating remixability, similarly plays on the contrast between jumping letters in a larger font against irregularly cut planes made from densely packed letters in much smaller fonts and feature texture fields composed from text that no longer need to be read , his work shows that many frames and software of importing and exporting data has been created, I therefore feel that import and exporting data into different software’s put the artist(s) a user, I would say that the designer who designed the ability for data to be compatible with other applications is the author, this has been a major help to artist but using numerous software to create a final piece would suggest to me that they are the user within remixability.
From researching different types of electronic space that is available I decided to use hypertext, hypermedia and remixability and I feel from the main points I raised it mostly would be the user that would be the author within an electronic space,” A new media object is not something that is fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in different, potentially infinite versions”. The user is the one who is managing, creating, storing their own information using different forms of data on the computer/internet, as web design has become more updated the user has to adapt to the changes of how information is linked, it sometimes create complications for the user of how to find all of the links on a webpage, moving the cursor through the page will make it fairly obvious, the texts, links etc. will begin to appear although web designers who want their material straight forward to access by others will avoid the notion of handling of links. The links between the issues that I raised gave me an understanding of how digital nature can be changed and is not fixed atoll you can find many links, “the older, traditional ideas of private, isolated thoughts and actions the patterns of mechanisitic technologies are very seriously threatened by new methods of instantaneous electric information retrieval, by the electrically computerized dossier bank” .

Authorship and Interaction Essay

Bibliograthy




Armstrong, Helen (ed. ). Graphic Design Theory: Reading from the Rield. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2009. Print.

Camuffo, Giorgio, and Mura Maddalena. Dalla. Graphic Design Worlds: Words. Milano: Electa, 2011. Print.

Grant, Barry Keith. Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2008. Print.

Landow, George P. Hypertext 2.0: Hypertext: The Convergence of Comtemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, 1997. Print.

Lanham, Richard A. The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1993. Print.

McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore. The Medium Is the Massage. New York: Random House, 1967. Print.

Biblograthy