The first has to do with the nature of hypertext as I've grown to understand it. Hypertext shouldn't try and confuse. Though that can sometimes be the result, it shouldn't be the purpose. Even so, a hypertextual document not only allows the reader to encounter the ideas presented in that document from different angles, it almost requires the reader to do so. When we climb a tree we continually encounter new choices that require that we take one path rather than another. Ultimately we end up on a limb, and in order to reach another, we have to backtrack and choose a different course. And the view is different from each branch. Hypertext allows us to move from limb to limb without passing through the branches in between. The jumpiness of those moves can created a disjointedness in the continuum of the reader's points of view. When we climb a tree, we can feel the approach of a different view. When we click on a link, that new view can often meet us as a surprise. But though it may seem strange to find precisely the same few from two perhaps even opposite branches, it can happen. And that being the case, I should admit that a chronological review of the Boidem is logical not only here, but also elsewhere, and there's no reason why it can't reside in both places.
But that's skirting the issue, because there's no tree here and nobody has to do any climbing, nor even take any risks of falling. A link is enough to solve the problem. We need the second answer. Each page takes a somewhat different approach to the same topic. That page deals with the development of the Boidem from the perspective of the various design decisions I encountered. This page (or at least its daughter pages) simply reviews the stages of the Boidem's development, each focusing on a particular aspect of that development:
LinksIt was after the 39th Boidem column from September 1999 that one of my most persistent readers (who also happens to be my brother) wrote and noted:
Graphics
Updates
By the way, I notice a somewhat greater personalization of your columns in recent months.This comment caught me more than a bit by surprise. After all, I was under the impression that the influx of personal information into the Boidem columns had taken place much earlier than September of 1999. Yet only at that rather late date along comes my brother, usually a perceptive observer, and comments on the change that he has noticed. But I think that the column that generated that comment represents a sort of milestone in the influx of personal material into the Boidem. In that column I discuss my reactions to seeing the film You've Got Mail. Unavoidably, personal elements crept into that column since it relates my reactions to the film. Nowhere do I claim to give an objective report on the use of e-mail in romantic relationships. But in order to introduce the topic under discussion it wasn't really necessary for me to give a report of what happened in my family that led me to see the film. That report (Hila stuck her hand in the video and wrecked it for a couple of days) is certainly not a particularly private report, but it perhaps stepped outside the bounds of using personal experience as a jumping off point for a column. Seeing the film is a jumping off point and is thus totally legitimate, even expected. Explaining what brought me to see the film is one step removed from that jumping off point. My guess is that it took three years of Boidem columns before I got to the point at which I felt comfortable making a report of that sort. Perhaps the most convincing sign of that comfort was simply the fact that I hadn't even noticed I'd done something a bit out of the ordinary.
Go to: Staking
yet another middle ground, or
Go to: What
a difference a da... makes, or
Go to: Trying
to make some sense out of all this, or
Go to: An
introduction to the extroduction, or
Go to: Web
Essays - The evolution of a (personal?) medium