Untitled - witz cultural

159RECONFIGURINGWRITINGdocument in which icons representing each document in the web werejoined by lines representing all links between documents. This Global TrackingMap, which functioned only during early stages of Intermedia's development,immediately demonstrated that such a device was virtr-rally useless forall but the smallest document sets or webs. (Although pictures of it haveappeared in articles on hypertext, the Global Tracking Map was never usededucationally and was never part of any released version of Intermedia.) It isworth noting this failed approach because, according to the computer scienceliterature, it seems to reappear again and again as a solution to orientationproblems for the Web.I RI S next developed the Local Tiacking Map, a dynamic hypergraph whoseicons represented the destinations of all the links in the current document.Upon opening a newlexia or activating a previously opened one, this graphicnavigational tool morphed, informing readers where links in the new lexiawould bring them. This dynamic hypergraph, which did much to prevent disorientation,became even more useful in its third and final version, the WebView with the addition of two more features: a graphic representation of thereader's history and transformation of the icons into links. Double clickingon any icon in the Web View opened the document it represented, therebyadding another way of making one's way through webs. (For illustrations, seeUtting and Yankelovich.;Although this feature succeeded well in orienting the reader, it workedeven better when combined with author-generated concept maps, such as theoverviews (sitemaps) I have employed on systems including Intermedia,Interleaf World View, Storyspace, Microcosm, MacWeb, and the World WideWeb. One basic form of these overviews surrounds a single concept (Victorianism,Darwinism, Gender Matters) or entity (Gaskell's North ond South,Dickens) by a series of others (literary relations, cultural context, economicbackground), to each of which many documents link. Whereas the Web Viewpresented all documents attached to the entire overview, the overview has ahierarchical organization but does not reveal the nature or number of documentslinked to each block. Intermedia provided two ways of obtaining ttrisinformation-amenu that following links from a particular link markeractivated the Web View (see Figure 8). Clicking on a particular link and thusactivating it darkened all the links attached to that block in the Web View.Thus, working together, individual documents and the Web View continuallyinformed the reader what information was one jump away from the currenttext. This combination of materials generated by authors and system featureswell exemplifies the way hypertext authors employ what are essentially