Trying to make some sense out of all this.

I read and/or subscribe to numerous internet based columns and lists. I am an avid reader and I take a special pleasure in finding authors whom I enjoy reading and then continuing to read what they have to say. As is to be expected, the topics covered by these columns are similar to those I cover in the Boidem. Frequently I find myself saying to myself that I wish I'd written what I've just read. But there is definitely something different about the Boidem, and not just the fact that I don't have much of significance to say.

Almost all of the columns which I read could be printed out and read as a traditional page. In other words, though the topics under discussion revolve around different aspects of internet use (including hypertext and "life on the web") they only make use of the web as a means of fast and easy transmission. Sometimes they include links that act as references to additional material, but most of these are concentrated at the end of the column. If the links are integrated into the body of the text, this usually appears to be the result of an editorial addition made by the editor of the online magazine in which the column appears, rather than part of authorial design.

The Boidem assumes the screen as the natural habitat of its columns and seeks to make use of that. Thus, although each column has a backbone, a home base, if the column is going to be considered successful (by me at least) it has to make use of the possibilities of the hypertextual environment. This wasn't a premeditated decision, but rather something that evolved, that developed along with the columns themselves.

Because the screen was the natural habitat of the columns, and because as time went on greater use was made of the possibilities of hypertext, I found it necessary to maintain a fairly consistent, and rather conservative, method of navigation. This method might best be referred to as nesting: each page was linked to the page it came from, and to the page that that page grew out of, back to the main page of a particular column (which in turn always contained a link back to the main contents page). Only rarely did I permit myself to deviate from this rule, and on the whole I found that maintaining it made those deviations all the more interesting through their being exceptions.

Admittedly, this method of linking is rather hierarchical, and less network-like than what might be expected in a highly hypertextual framework. It seems to me, however, that the goal of a web essay is not the creation of confusion, but rather the creation of a provocative atmosphere. Thus, though I played with the idea of distinguishing between links that remained "onsite" and links that brought the reader someplace outside of the Boidem, I preferred not to make use of what might have been considered a navigational aid of this sort. I wanted to maintain a larger element of surprise, of not knowing what to expect.

The basic layout of the pages of each Boidem column, the navigational links at the bottom of each page and the inclusion of simple textual links in the body of each column were central design decisions. They essentially define the Boidem, the nature and ambience of a web essay as I understand it. But of course a number of additional side-issues, secondary design decisions, were also instrumental in giving the Boidem a distinctive character.

Eventually the need for a search function emerged. Though I might hope that readers would make use of this function, it was needed mostly by me when I wanted to check whether and when I raised particular issues or referred to particular people. It was added in January of 2000.

So we're almost finished. But we can't really conclude all this without asking a few questions about the nature of this entire summarial project. And yet another question begs to be asked. I spend a good deal of my waking hours on the World Wide Web. As I visit and examine the various web sites that I click to I can't help but ask myself if the Boidem has become an anachronism. After everyone with an internet connection has tried his or her hand at building a personal web page, these don't seem to generate as much excitement as they once did. And of course the web has become the stage for e-commerce and e-business and e-many-other-things, but there seems to be much less interest in e-information that reflects on itself. At one point hypertextual web-essays seemed truly to matter. Does anyone care anymore?

In a short article in Feed Magazine, Keith Devlin, a researcher at Stanford University, comments (with statistics to substantiate his claim):

There are those who claim that we are witnessing a change in emphasis. From a literary culture we are swiftly being transformed into a visual culture. In order to learn we no longer need books, but instead we have acquired new methods for assimilating information. Others would simply say that we've become illiterate. As someone whose feet are planted in a literary culture, but who wholeheartedly accepts the possibility of other means of knowing, I have to admit that the latter view seems the most convincing. A generation from now adults may not know how to read. I raise this point neither as a warning, nor as a grieving, but instead as a focus for self-reflection. Throughout the development of the Boidem I have had to ask myself whether my use of hypertext has been as an auxiliary to the text, or whether I have put the links above the text. A parallel question has been whether I write about myself via the topics I raise in the Boidem, or whether the topics themselves have become enhanced through the inclusion of personal reflections. (One other significant question is why all this is being written for a thesis for the School of Education of Tel Aviv University.) Hypertext permits, even demands, an examination of possibilities, an expanding of the available options. But I hope that I have continually allowed the text to be at the center, at the base, of all of my experimentation. If the text hasn't had a reason to exist and to be read, any technological pyrotechnics that surround it have no meaning.