hofmann@infbs.UUCP (Martin Hofmann) (06/23/89)
Some Remarks on a New Journal Called
HYPERMEDIA
by Martin Hofmann
Institut fuer Betriebsysteme
TU Braunschweig
Bueltenweg 74-75
D-3300 Braunschweig
Fed. Rep. Germany
Tel.: [++49] (0)531 -- 391 3249
UUCP: mcvax!unido!infbs!hofmann
BITNET: hofmann@dbsinf6.BITNET
Just in front of me lies the first edition of a new scientific
journal on hypertext and related topics. As many of the regularly
appearing journals, it consists of longer articles (three inside
the actual edition), and reviews. It is edited by Patricia Baird,
Univ. of Strathclyde (Scotland), and will appear three times a year.
The journal is published by Taylor Graham Publishing, 500 Chesham House,
150 Regent Street, London W1R 5FA, UK. It will cost 85$ a year. The first
volume had 91 A5-pages.
The editorial board includes some "big names" of the hypertext society,
as Nicole Yankelovich, Robert Akcsyn, Jakob Nielsen, Ted Nelson, and
Randy Trigg. Most of the other persons of the editorial board come from
the UK, especially from Scottish Universities. So this journal seems
to connect a local community having a heavy hypertext interest with some
already well known experts; not a bad starting point for a journal to be
successful.
In its first volume, besides an introduction by the editor, you will get
a "hyperwelcome" by Ted Nelson, who coined the term Hypertext. In his
remarks, he critisizes the incompatibility of the hypertext worlds created
by actual research and development. Also, he warns you about a world not
controlled by mankind but by machines; this is leading him to a sharp
remark on AI. Nelson is a kind of guru inside the hypertext community,
and as many gurus, he has to suffer being called a charlatan by some people.
After his welcome words, you will find a honest scientific journal
for an area, which is developing rather rapidly for the last 18 months.
To begin with the end of the journal, there are four reviews.
Jaquetta Megarry reviews Sueann Ambron's and Kristina Hooper's (eds.)
"Interactive Multimedia", a compilation of various articles of an Apple
invitation conference in 1986, published in 1988.
David Riddle reviews Ed Barrett's (ed.) "Text, ConText, and HyperText".
Also, this book contains various articles related to hypermedia topics.
Mark Percival writes about a guiding book on HyperCard, "Hands-on HyperCard"
by Mimi Jones and Dave Myers.
The last review is about a science fiction book related to a hypermedia
game world, William Gibson's "Neuromancer".
While the last review perhaps seems a little bit unusual for a scientific
journal, on the better part it shows the open-mindness of the actual
hypertext community. So I would not complain. On the worse part, you
can guess, whether there was a lack on reviews or not.
To speak about lacks, I missed scheduled dates for conferences on hypertext-
related topics. Maybe there are not that many, maybe the journal is too new and
unknown to get a notice for an already scheduled conference; but I think,
it should be a necessary part of later editions.
After the reviews, the journal closes with a commented bibliography on
hypertext by Jakob Nielsen. There are not so many citations as in the
bibliography of N.Yankelovich (IRIS-project), but rather excellent comments.
Also, it contains an overview of other places, where hypertext literature
has been published (journals, conferences, workshops).
After writing about the beginning and the end of the new edition, I have to
tell you something about the meat in between. First thing I noticed (after
being enjoyed about the styled cover): all three authors of the articles
are females (my girlfriend noticed this immediately, too). Also in the
editorial board, there are more women than average in science and technics.
Surely it is sad, that you notice such a thing as "not average or normal"
even nowadays; certainly, if it was not by chance, it has been a quite good
idea of the editors.
While the first article's issues concern philosophical and basic questions,
the second one is about a tool, using hypertext as a base for constructing
this tool. The third article describes an application of hypertext, and
evaluates the usability of this application.
The first article is written by Virginia Doland and titled "Hypermedia as an
interpretive act". The article points out, that creating a hypertext always
is a way to interpret some issues. Neutrality is impossible. Technical or
organizational decisions influence meaning. She shows the dangers of
subjectivity in the main areas of future hypertext applications: education
and research. Besides its content, the article shows, that hypertext is
not only a topic for computer scientists; we read an human scientist's view.
To me, the article seemed really concise.
The second article describes "Structuring knowledge bases for designers
of learning materials" and has been written by E.B.Duncan. Designers of
learning materials should have the choice, which medium to use (e.g. video,
computer etc.). Also, they could use various media as sources for their
information. Duncan describes a tool, which allows representation of the
implicit structures of expert knowledge. The tool is based on the Xerox'
NoteCards system. Nodes (Cards) may be created to represent various concepts,
links represent relationships between the concepts. Some standard link types
are offered to the expert to express some common concepts. This is necessary,
because the final designer of the learning materials usually is another
person than the expert. Also some standard card types are used.
The third article, "Evaluating the usability of the Glasgow Online hypertext"
by Lynda Hardman, describes an application of Apple's HyperCard. A tourist
information system was built using HyperCard and a black&white MacIntosh.
The usability of the system (respective its disadvantages) was tested
in artificially created situations; evaluation was by interview. So the
observations were not carried out to gather statistically significant results,
but they gave hints on the usefulness of some structures, especially some
kind of links. Every designer of a hypertext should read this article; if
he/she follows the rules of Hardman (ans perhaps the rhetorical rules of
Landow [IRIS-project]), it should improve the design of the web.
Some final remarks:
To me, it was astonishing to find really exact directions to authors somewhere
in this journal, while one author of the first edition (Duncan) does not
satisfy these directions.
I found the article of V.Doland very interesting and worth to think about.
I did not quite get the point, why E.Duncan's article was
chosen for a first edition (anyway, she is also from Scotland).
Perhaps the article was just too short; if it had concentrated
more on the hypertext application and less on the methods of knowledge
elicitation, it would have fit more to the topics of the journal.
The article of L.Hardman was the most interesting one to me, for it
described an user interface of a typical application, and gave hints
for styling hypertexts.
I found the reviews instructive, and as I already have written, the
bibliography by J.Nielsen excellent. All in all, I like to see more
of that stuff.