Untitled - witz cultural

l0HYPERTEXT 3.0 ter of selection"-information retrieval-and the primary reason that thosewho need information cannot find it lies in turn with inadequate means ofstoring, arranging, and tagging information:Our ineptitudegetting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systemsof indexing. When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabeticallyor numerically, and information is found (when it is) bytracing it down from subclassto subclass. lt can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to haverules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found oneitem, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path' (31)As Ted Nelson, one of Bush's most prominent disciples, points out,,,there is nothing wrong with categorization. It is, however, by its nature transient:category systems have a halflife, and categorizations begin to lookfairly stupid after a few years . . . The army designation of 'Pong Balls, Ping'has a certain universal character to ir" (Literary Machines, 2 1491. AccotdingtoBush and Nelson, then, one of the greatest strengths of hlpertext lies in itscapacity of permitting users to find, create, and follow multiple conceptualstructures in the same body of information. Essentially, they describe thetechnological means of achieving Derrida's concept of decentering.In contrast to the rigidity and difficulty of access produced by presentmeans of managing information based on print and other physical records,one needs an information medium that better accommodates the way themind works. After describing present methods of storing and classifyingknowledge, Bush complains, "The human mind does not work that way" ('AsWe May Think," 31) but by association. With one fact or idea "in its grasp,"the mind "snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association ofthoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carded by the cellsof the brain" (32).To liberate us from the confinements of inadequate systems of classificationand to permit us to follow natural proclivities for "selection by association,rather than by indexing," Bush therefore proposes a device, the"memex," that would mechanize a more efficient, more human, mode ofmanipulating fact and imagination. 'A memex," he explains, "is a device inwhich an individual stores his books, records, and communications, andwhich is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed andflexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory" (32). Wriring in the days before digital computing (the first idea for a memex came tohim in the mid-1930s), Bush conceived of his device as a desk with translucentscreens, levers, and motors for rapid searching of microform records'