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Saturday, May 4, 2002
 


Jon,
 
When you write a variant article called Blogging under the "Macroscope"  ...it will be even more truly said that ..."conversations that had been diffuse and indirect came sharply into focus.."
 
I've been thinking and writing about this kind of thing for a long time (see CV and a paper called "Are Species Intelligent" at http://home.earthlink.net/~jschull/  ) and have taken it up again in an ever-evolving Macroscope Manifesto and at the MeatballWiki which I am hoping to use as a collaboratory for this kind of thing.  (If you know of a better one, please let me know.)  What with wikis, blogs, google, soap, etc. the limiting factor is now not in getting data on the connections but in simple pre-cognitive visualizations of them. 
 
In case, you don't get HTML mail, this message with links will be at my weblog  http://radio.weblogs.com/0104369/2002/05/04.html

comments? [] 4:52:58 PM    

LinkBacks


Here is an article (and example) of linkbacks that provides a useful list of related linkback efforts. 

comments? [] 4:35:03 PM    


[Home]RepresentationsOfPaths

MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Preferences | Indices | Categories

What is the "right" way of representing "
PathsInHypermedia"?

Definitions of "right"

  • effective (but effective for what? computers or people?)
  • intuitive (but intuitive for whom? oldtimers or newcomers)
  • natural (making use of the viewer's inbuilt predispositions, or of the natural affordances of the wiki)
  • efficient (from a coding perspective, an analytic perspective, or from the perspective of a busy and attention-limited user)

There has not been enough work done in devising and evaluating rightness re the human/newcomer's inbuilt perecptual predispositions.

Alternative representations

  • Arrows and Boxes (technically obvious but perceptually disorienting because right angles and parallel lines are easy to confuse)
  • Spikes (as in TouchGraph)and Boxes (spikes eliminate the extraneous elements in arrows and make the direction of movement clear at every point, not just at the end)
  • Curves and Ovals (splines are technically difficult but they can be used to create intuitive trajectories for the eye to follow)
  • Branches and Leaves (500M years of evolution, and the fact that our nervous systems were evolved to cope with these structures might be telling us something)
  • Others, e.g., http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/plants/plantaesy.html
  • Matrices (a Linker vs Linkee matrix captures the entire structure (but not the layout) of a graph. Good for a computer; usually bad for a person.

The disciplines of GraphTheory? and GraphLayout? deal with these issues, but I repeat: "There has not been enough work done in devising and evaluating rightness re the human/newcomer's inbuilt perecptual predispositions." --JonSchull


comments? [] 11:56:30 AM    

PathsInHypermedia


This excellent page http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?PathsInHypermedia includes this:

ElementsOfLocality mentions that Meatball doesn't have "paths" as such. The various IndexingSchemes are more like maps than paths - a path is more than just a link from node A to node B. Imagine the freedom of movements within a public park, and the distinction of paths therein. A path is a navigational structure, not just a navigational potentiality.

Some interesting path rhetorics are described at [Eastgate's] [Patterns of Hypertext] and demonstrated at [Eastgate's Hypertext Garden]

CategoriesAndTopics partially serve this role, as well as any of the OutOfLineLinks IndexingSchemes, like VisitingLink which is implemented in PhpWiki. But neither approach the level suggested here.

See also VisitedLink for a deeper discussion of socially but implicitly constructed paths (Hebbian learning).

And, indeed [Patterns of Hypertext] and [Eastgate's Hypertext Garden]  are wonderful essays.

They suggest to me that a mapping of the various hypertext webs referred to ought to be a good empirical testbed of the utility of the various visualization approaches (e.g., graphviz, touchgraph, or botanical renderings):

  • which approach differentiates the various webs best?
  • which approach leads to most informative expectations (seems truer to the web being represented)?

comments? [] 11:51:10 AM    


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