I added a page to the hyperworlds website:
http://hyperworlds.org/ReplacingWeb.html

Replacing the web

by Jack Seay - July 6, 2005

Our media unneccessarily reflects our political system. In my country, there are
only two
viable (electable) political parties. Only one is usually in dominent power at
any give time,
and only 2 points of view are considered worthy of a hearing. But there are
often more
than 2 sides to an issue. I will be controversial here, because the issue I am
confronting is
the lack of a media that correctly handles controversy. It is sometimes
contended that
wikis are the ideal media for presenting a plurality of views. I think this is
not the case. A
wiki discourages controversy (as do most mailing lists and Internet forums). You
have to
stay "on topic" because of a lack of structuring systems and inadequate personal
filtering
capability by and for each user. On mailing lists, everything gets thrown into a
common
pot. Forums allow starting new threads, but lack really good cross-linking and
hypersharing among the threads. Wikis allow anyone to change anything, but this
enables
the destruction of information by vandals. A better solution would be to only
allow
creating new versions based on existing ones. Deleting something should only be
allowed
to the creator of that content, or for legal reasons; because deletion destroys
links to the
deleted content. It is better to just create a newer version of a document and
leave the
older version still available, but pointing to the new version (showing the
changes made).

Others should have carte blanche to quote anything, but the original content
creator
should always receive payment and credit (if they are selling their content). In
addition,
any quotations should automatically link back to the original full-length
context crafted by
the author.

Second Life is planning on implementing HTML display in both 2D and 3D. This
will be an
improvement over the simple plain text notecards now in use or the 3D bitmap
text that
can be created now (with difficulty). But I hope this will only be a temporary
transitional
text-handling technique. SL deserves the features of Xanadu and zig-zag.

1. Links - 2 way unbreakable of different types: to and from any length spans,
not just
from a point to a full document.

2. Hypersharing - this will protect authors from having their work stolen or
destroyed, and
allow readers unlimited quoting rights. Also called transclusions, this will
facilitate simple
automatic incremental payment systems where desired; robust, powerful, and
flexible
versioning with visual intercomparison of versions.

3. Separating content from format. This will allow creating multi-use versions
of the same
document for various needs: PDA's and phones, printing, web pages, 3D and nD
explorable documents, and much more.

4. Views: These are related to formats, but are templates that display any
document in a
variety of ways, 2D and 3D grids, stacks, scatter diagrams, simple pages,
floating
branching streams, and anything else that can be imagined. Formats will apply
text styles
to specific documents, views will display any document in a variety of ways.

Versions will allow each reader to have their own personal "copy" of any
document, with
their annotations, highlighting, footnotes, links, corrections, additions, etc.
- without
destroying the original. This personal version can be kept private to the reader
or shared,
and can even be hypershared in other people's personal versions. Movies can be
made
where anyone who wants to can edit their own scene list in any order they
desire.

We are divided politically, religiously, and philosophically. We lack the proper
forum to
present our cases and compare them to others. Sure, we compare what we believe
compared with a charicature of our own making of what we believe others believe,
but
that's not good enough. Let those who best understand a viewpoint present it
fully, and
then quote them in such a way that readers can follow every quote into its'
original
context. Let those who use a word define their own meaning of that word in their
modified
version of a dictionary. For example, a writer presenting a case for
macro-evolution may
use a definition of science as being the study of a naturalistic Universe (one
not permitting
a designer). And a writer presenting the case for intelligent design will
obviously use a
different definition of science. These different definitions of the same word
are part of the
full context of each presentation, and there cannot be a true understanding of
either
viewpoint without that context of the differences in the language. Same goes for
all other
viewpoints on this and any other topic.

HTML and the Web are hypertext very nearly as simple as possible. This has lead
to overly
complex fixes to try to overcome the limitations. What is needed is something as
simple as
appropriate, and as complex as needed to get the job done right. The Web doesn't
even
come close to that in any way, and never will as long as it doesn't have the
basic feature
set of Xanadu as outlined here. Ideally, I would here link to the better
description of
Xanadu in Ted Nelson's book "The Future of Information", but it is out of print.