Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!psuvax1!psuvm!uh2
From: UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer)
Newsgroups: comp.groupware
Subject: Re: The Necessity of a New Tool for Philosophical Development
Message-ID: <90006.103222UH2@PSUVM.BITNET>
Date: 6 Jan 90 15:32:22 GMT
References: <2761@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 27


I'd like to thank Cliff for his long exposition, and make a few comments.

The idea of HyperText is very appealing, but as Cliff says, its implementation
on the grand scale will be long and difficult.  it seems unlikely to me
that any attempt to analyze, design, and construct such a system will fail.
At the same time, such systems will evolve, borrowing ideas here and there till
such capabilities are widely available.  By analogy, I offer our experience
with electronic mail, where despite numerous attempts to offer its capabilities
to the general public, it is finally something like FAX that really takes
off.

My second point is that a general purpose distributed semantic network
architecture is not the hard part.  The hard part is deciding what to
put in the general purpose distributed semantic network.  To make these
decisions people will have to debate endlessly on the merits of this or that
approach.  That's the point of the previous groupware thread---how can we
create an efficient discussion and decision making environment?

It seems to me that there are two tracks evolving.  On is to take a
system like email or UseNet and try to add more structure to it, and the
other is to take a system like HyperText and try to make it more dynamic
so that is can manage discussions and debates as well as archival knowledge.

Fun, eh?

        lee