From A Console To A Network  

  
        So far we have more or less 
assumed a single-processor version of 
this  system, one which easily treats 
all documents and their versions as 
an  interconnected whole because they 
are stored in the same place.  But 
given  today's network technologies, 
this is not a real restriction.  

        The system should be able to 
grow without size limit, containing 
in  the body of available writings 
whatever anyone has stored from any 
place on  the network.  A user at any 
location may store what he or she 
wishes; links  may be created by 
anyone, from anywhere, to bring a 
document (or part of one)  to the 
inquiring user.  

        All of storage near and far 
becomes a united whole-- what is now  
called a "distributed data base."  
Actual locations are essentially 
invisible  to the user; or, in that 
traditional phrase, "You don't care 
where it's  stored."  The documents 
and their links unite into what is 
essentially a  swirling complex of 
equi-accessible unity.  

  

Multi-Person Use  

  
        For the time being we will 
ignore the problem of privacy, and 
assume  that all users are freely 
sharing their work.  

        Anything stored by one user 
on the system may be quoted-- adopted 
into  a document-- by another person 
writing on the system.  No copy is 
made of the  quoted material; rather, 
a quote-link symbol (or its essential 
equivalent) is  placed in the quoting 
document.  This quotation does not 
affect the integrity  or uniqueness 
of the original document, since no 
copy is made.  Nor does it  affect 
the ownership: in our planned 
service, a standard proportional  
copyright fee is paid automatically 
by the user every time a fragment is  
summoned.  

        The use of special links 
dramatically simplifies a host of 
problems.  

        No copying operations are 
required among the documents 
throughout the  system, and thus the 
problems of distributed update, so 
familiar throughout  the computer 
world are obviated.  Since quoted 
material only has to reside in  its 
place of origin, and not in the other 
documents that quote it, other files  
that quote it are automatically 
"updated" when its owner changes it.  

  

Philosophy of the Perplex  

  
        Often the truth about a 
subject is difficult or impossible to 
find,  though a great deal of 
information about it is on hand.  
Frederick C. Crews  has implicitly 
proposed the term "perplex" for such 
a body of information, in  his 
masterful academic satire, *The Pooh 
Perplex*(11).  

        Intuitively, we ought to be 
able to use computers to help us sort 
out  and order the complexities of 
what is written, so that our grasp of 
it becomes  firmer and clearer.  I 
have proposed the term "thinkertoy" 
for such a facility  (10); more 
recently such terms as "decision 
support system" have appeared in  the 
literature.  But what has been less 
clear is the nature of what such  
systems should be like.  

        Our system facilitates 
multiple interpretations of the same 
material.  Whatever is stored may be 
seen as a compound object, either 
organized in  different versions or 
viewed through other documents.  Each 
may independently  represent a 
different point of view.  Thus users 
may highlight different  
interpretations of the same material, 
by quoting or linking in from 
different  documents.  Thus it seems 
to be a genuine thinkertoy for strong 
and subtle  intercomparisons.  

        We spoke earlier of the 
unending change of ideas, the way in 
which a  given field is constantly 
subject to reinterpretation.  It is a 
tradition of  western thought that 
such reinterpretation is always 
possible, always going  on. But how 
can a literature that has been 
described in one way be  
reinterpreted in another without 
total rewriting?  

        Within our system, the user 
may make marginal notes and new 
documents  that ease his task in 
totally reinterpreting (or "newly 
interpreting") the  material before 
him.  He has only to make his own 
summary of another piece of  writing 
writing-- and indicate the pathway by 
a correlink.  A reader may then  
summon the corresponding part at any 
time he wishes to confirm the  
interpretation.  

        The improved visualization 
and control of alternative theories 
and  viewpoints, of disparate and 
corresponding ideas, should give a 
person a  broader grasp of everything 
he reads and thinks about.  By 
providing such  tools ready to hand, 
we think we are contributing to a new 
way of seeing.  

 A Radical Implementation Sequence  

  
        The system as it is currently 
being implemented is based upon this  
structure.  

        Since conventional operating 
systems work with conventional files, 
new  approaches had to be found.  

        Now, the normal way to create 
a new program in the computer field 
is  to it on an existing computer 
setup.  A computer setup consists of 
a computer  and its main control 
program, or operating system, which 
handles all file  access and update.  
However, since our approach required 
a radical  redefinition of file 
storage and operations upon what the 
files contain, the  focus of the 
enterprise has been on the redesign 
and re-implementation of what  most 
computer people have thought was 
completely settled, the file system.  
This in turn requires the creation of 
a whole new operating system, since 
the  operating systems presently 
available rest upon a conventional 
view and  implementation of file 
structures.  These have been 
non-trivial obstacles.  

        The current version is now in 
code in a suitable systems language, 
and  we expect to demonstrate the 
major functions of the system in a 
reasonable  time.  

  

Publication Through The System On The 
Postulated Network  

  
        The system's design is a 
unified whole, but we may think of it 
as the  basic conceptual structure, 
plus a technical structure which 
makes it  possible, and a contractual 
structure which makes it possible for 
people to  use it confidently.  These 
aspects taken together make a unified 
design.   Because the conceptual 
structure required very fast lookup 
within a tightly  organized but 
largely linked system, we had to 
develop a particular technical  
structure; and because the conceptual 
structure expects participants to 
behave  in certain ways, these are 
embraced in the contract offered to 
users.  These  provisions are 
necessary for the orderly and 
confident use of published  material 
by many people.  

        Beyond its use as a private 
network, we intend that this system 
be  usable as a publication system.  
Thus a carefully designed system of  
publication, much like that of paper, 
has been worked out.  

        Any user may store anything 
on the system.  Unless specified  
otherwise, it is a private document.  
If the user chooses to publish it,  
however, he may do so with relative 
ease, making it available to anyone  
throughout the network. It is then a 
published document.  

        Because publication is an 
important act, both for authors and 
readers,  we make publication a 
solemn event, to be undertaken 
cautiously.  The author  signs an "I 
hereby publish" form, after which not 
only is the document  universally 
available, but its author may not 
withdraw it except by lengthy  due 
process.  (He may readily publish a 
superceeding document, but the former 
version remains on the network.)  

        An author who wishes to 
render his work universally 
available, but  wishes also to retain 
the right to withdraw it at any time, 
has a simple means  for doing so.  He 
simply designates his document as a 
private document with  unrestricted 
distribution.  Anyone may have access 
to it or use it, but the  owner is 
free to withdraw it or change it 
irrecallably at any time.  

        Any user may read, or 
otherwise employ, any published 
document on the  system, or any 
private document to which he has 
legitimate access.  He can  make any 
kind of links to it from his own 
documents, private or not.  

        Accessibility and free 
linking make a two-sided coin.  On 
the one  hand, each user is free to 
link to anything privately or 
publically.  By the  same token, each 
author of a published work is 
relinquishing the right to  control 
links into that work.  The 
relinquishment is part of the 
publishing  contract.  

        The user may employ any 
terminal, graphical or printing.  
Viewing  methods and manipulations 
are up to the terminal designer.  No 
restraint is  contemplated as to what 
use may be made of the materials 
found on the system,  since no 
restraint is possible.  

        We will recommend certain 
programs for use on the user's 
terminal or  personal computer, but 
these may be created by any party.  
Approved terminal  programs may be 
offered certain trademark advantages, 
but no terminal behavior  can or will 
be forbidden.  

  

Noncoercive In Use  

  
        We see this system as 
offering remarkable power to all 
users with the  greatest possible 
freedom of use.  

  

 The System's Future And Sweep  

  
        We have created this system 
intending to offer a viable 
alternative to  all forms of reading, 
writing, archiving and study now 
handled by methods of  paper.  
Through the system it is possible to 
mimic, perhaps viably, many  aspects 
of the great society of paper: books, 
magazines, private notes,  copyright, 
royalty, archiving, and roles for 
author, publisher, and critic.  

        We want it available to 
everyone at $2.00 an hour, and to 
assure  freedom of speech on the 
system, the integrity of copyright, 
and other  high-minded objectives 
with respect to its broad future use. 

        Obviously this is a somewhat 
ambitious plan, and we cannot judge 
its  viability ourselves.  But even 
given more moderate goals, it seems 
to be a  versatile structure for 
other purposes.  For instance, it 
would seem to be a  good 
public-access memory service, 
offering a backend with much greater  
flexibility than standard storage.  
Objects can be stored "seamlessly," 
and  the need have no concern for 
their size, naming of alternative 
versions,  linkage and the like.  
Thus it would seem also to be a 
favorable storage  structure for 
naive user systems of all kinds, by 
its removal of various  levels of 
complication.  

        It should go without saying 
that the system may be used for all 
other  forms of linked data base, 
including animated graphics, which we 
hope will be  an important component 
of future educational and leisure 
systems.  

        Such an approach offers to 
standardize, not languages or 
processors or  algorithms, but the 
storage form of linkable and complex 
materials, and  terminal interfaces 
for their exploration.  This would 
seem also to be a  worthy goal.  

        It may be noticed that the 
system adopts readily for purposes of 
"electronic mail," using the null 
adaptation.  

  

Conclusion  

  
        Text is the self-portrait of 
human thought; more precisely, it is 
the  ordered presentation of the 
results of that thought.  Specific 
textual  conventions have evolved in 
different aspects of human endeavor, 
but to study  any of the by itself is 
misleading, like studying only one 
part of the body or  only one sex of 
a species.  

        The computer field has 
gradually become aware of text 
problems, but  most computer people 
see them as independent areas, like 
"word processing" and  "electronic 
mail" and "information retrieval."  

        And so it is that computer 
people have for the most part never 
looked  at the whole picture.  
Conventional system designers have 
approached small  subsets of the 
grand text problem, and the resulting 
designs have tended to be  
complicated and cumbersome.  Often 
they require, not only a tangle of  
specialized and user languages, but 
new social roles for supervisors and  
service personnel, since ordinary 
people cannot be taught their use.  
System  complexity appears to rise in 
proportion to system size, or worse, 
by some  power of system size.  But a 
little thought shows at once that 
this cannot be  permitted.  At that 
rate nothing is going to work.  

        The view I am suggesting is 
that the problem is unique, singular 
and  enormous, and the solution can 
therefore only be unique, singular 
and  enormously simple.  I think 
there are not many text problems, but 
one problem,  *the* text problem, 
which is the grand interplay of 
written materials, their  
interconnections, and the minds that 
play on these interconnections like  
harp-strings.  

        There is a specialty in the 
computer trade called "system 
design."  Now, we all design systems, 
but is their a right way?  (In some 
cases a system  is intended to do 
something utterly new, and so there 
is nothing to be studied  or 
replaced, but that is not germane to 
our problem.)  

        By some accounts, system 
design is the study of existing 
methods in  some area of human 
endeavor, and the translation of 
these methods to a  computer 
equivalent of some kind.  But this 
broad description is not very  
helpful.  

        To observe and copy is not 
enough.  True, the job of the system  
designer is in part to observe what 
people do in an existing system and 
take  note of all the different 
activities that he sees-- no matter 
what the people  think they are doing 
or seem to be doing.  But the job of 
the actual design  requires more.  A 
designer necessarily makes 
compressions and adaptations.      
This is the creative part.  And the 
designer should seek simplicity.  

        There is no reason, in 
systems design, to ratify and 
perpetuate those  individual and 
local complications of life which 
have arisen in various  contexts.  
Just as the scientist seeks 
generalizations, unifying ideas which 
summarize and compress all the 
varying details he may observe,; so 
the system  designer seeks also an 
underlying structure in whatever 
existing system he is  adapting to 
the computer.  But this structure is 
not merely empirically found;  in 
part it is imaginatively created, and 
represents the designer's conceptual  
encapsulation of what he thinks is 
going on, and what he thinks should 
go on.  
