These document formats were designed as paper simulations-- indeed, the simulation of paper unreachable under glass. And all of this takes place under a misguided ideology which imposes hierarchy-- on the data units (traditional since 1945) and more recently on the contents themselves(XML). But preserving the artifacts and documents of civilization is not about imposing paper models or hierarchy. It is about representing exactly whatever is. The world's artifacts and documents must be represented in their full complexity and disorder, not be forced into arbitrary structures. For this we need deeper forms of document, linkage, and representation infrastructure-- which are fortunately still possible.

Biographical Sketch:

When Ted Nelson started in the computer field in 1960, he called himself a philosopher and a film-maker, and believed that the field needed the ideas that came to him from both philosophy and film-making. Accordingly, from that fall of 1960 he began designing new constructs for a world of personal computing and new constructs for a world of electronic documents, which he christened "hypertext."

Others think his visions of personal computing and electronic documents have come true, but Nelson sees these worlds as having gone all wrong. Personal computing should make life easier, and deep hypertext should make easier the processes of writing, annotation, version management, document intercomparison, and content re-use. Nelson believes all these are still possible, and that it is still his duty to make things right.

A fuller biographical sketch can be found HERE