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hypertext textbook

after working to html two of howard's books, and after meeting him,
I thought - someone should write this guy's biography.

but I wasn't really talking about his biography, I was talking about taking down his stories

all the bits and pieces of computer and technology history he spews in a structure most resembling hypertext - links and references

storytelling

so how to put that online?

or rather,

how to build a structure to sustain hundreds of howard's bits?

eminds has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in a fancy database system

the easiest web world I can think of simply resembles my life story

where a student could wander and explore to her heart's content the pieces and perspectives from history

like my autobiography, but more flexible and interrelatable and expandable;
my structure works for one writer, one webmaster. trying to make it work for a company would be headachin'

all of howard's 50 word summaries of the critical elements,
the lewis mumford I never read, but he sums up beautifully
the lessons that plants and terance mckenna might have for internet denizens
his personal experience with bill gates that sums up the microsoft experience

how they interrelate, and according bits of multimedia

java simulators of old operating systems, pictures, sound, video of doug englebarts famous lecture

so I envision a hypertextual history of technology
howard's brain online
howard ramblin' and relatin'

problems
when something is described in the course of something else
how do you excerpt the incidental and provide it both in the context of the larger story and a separate chunk?
server side includes will only go so far, become enormously complex when working with raw text.

do you build the thing to allow folks to add their own content?

this is a fundamental web question)
with just a conferencing window?

what's the revenue stream?

10/19/96 2am

the idea is to build, using database and web technology
a


there is still editorial pass made on the subjects
though annotation technology should ideally be accounted for the early stages of development
the system exists primarily as a means of collaborative miltiple perspective multiple medias hyperlinked educational facilitation.
the main goal of which is to allow the student to etiher seek out particular pieces of information, or to wander their way through as subjects strike their fancy.
the object of building a flexible base of knowledge is to provide for a number of guides to easily link you through their pieces in the database.
those pieces can and should be any form of media, so long as they are knitted into the larger fabric by whatever database driven document standard provision for navigation and manipulation.
so the pices can both serve, at any level, as their own media base, and as parts of larger wholes. that without even acknowledging it, they could be framed by other interfaces and programs
while still being drawn from the same original source
again, here the emphasis is on maximum flexibility, as well as document tracking - that a payment and popularity measurement be at all times facile and permitted.

the student approaching this material might set out to compose pieces for their own report
might follow the published pieces of others
or might follow closely upon the intended paths of specific creators
if designed with the right kind of flexibility, the system could allow those sytudents to contribute their research, to always be stored on the original machines
because if there is any priority consistency or solidity in this project
addressing is of critical importance,
and to have pieces of the whole offsite is unnactable to project management.
so the addressing scheme must consist both of easy to read english language words, as well as database accessable heirarchy
so either the principles of library science are applied to keep the documents lined up neatly in established onto?logical category, or the pieces each stand as a water molecule in a pond, isolated reachable parts of a whole.


over time, it is flexible to grow to encompass the following multimedia elements:

shockwave versions of ?'s ticker tape and old style punch cards
streaming video englebart then and now
streaming video rheingold's rambling site tours synched up with web pages flashing by
resulting in a java based linear navigation pallette
palace classrooms

eminds | life

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