• Hypertext

    Resilient Citations

    A fragile citation is a citation with a mutable source, that is, source text that can be modified or deleted after the citation is published. Referencing a conventional web URL (such as in the traditional “Retrieved at” format) would be a fragile citation since the webpage may be changed, the server may go down, the domain name may expire, etc. A resilient citation, in contrast, is a citation with an immutable source, or permanent link to its source text. Great strides are being made towards a permanent web with technologies such as IPFS, Arweave, and Swarm. Such a Web would effectively make all published resources resilient. These are early technologies…

  • Hypertext

    Transclusion, Sovereignty, and Psychosomatic Overhead

    My central concern was to create a publishing system with universal quotability by transclusion, a concept I saw as vital Ted Nelson. Possiplex, p258.  I like it [transclusion] as a concept but it can’t work in reality, in my mind, unless it’s on a very small system. Frode Hegland That’s fair. I think transclusion is doable when the percepts are highly constrained. Intelligently representing context (and allowing intuitive viewing of the same content across multiple contexts) is I believe one of the core design challenges for the field of Cybersemics (extended sensemaking). Transclusion/contextuality is core to em’s view and data model.  I also like being able to ’take’ and ‘own’ something and not…

  • Hypertext

    Digital Dialog & Publishing

    Here are some extemporaneous thoughts about dialogic publishing, loosely in response to http://wordpress.liquid.info/10/pdf-notifications/frode/. No authoring system will satisfy everyone, but a common structure of dialogue (truly, a common semiotic structure) is, in my belief, while not perfectable, pragmatically feasible. Such a universal system must be based on an interoperable format/protocol. I will refrain from going into technical details at present. I just wish to frame/name this core part of the problem.  I think the social and group dynamics of the intended interaction are important. Is it 1-on-1 dialog? 3-person? More? Each of these forms has different dynamics, just as they are in-person. For example, when a third enters a 1-on-1 conversation, body…

  • Hypertext

    Change

    In response to: http://wordpress.liquid.info/10/change-is-expensive/frode/ This is why I am happy to piggy-back on PDF and WordPress/HTML and web standards such as Linked Data Notifications. PDF really, truly, needs to be sunset. It is only holding us back. WordPress is excellent for content self-publishing and much can be built on it. At the same time, it is an older codebase with some inherent limitations that I suspect will present some obstacles to more advanced interaction architectures. I personally swore off PHP years ago. Web Standards including Linked Data Notifications are the future when it comes to implementation AND they largely do not specify the necessary design patterns for the kinds interactivity…