Nancy says, "Along with the production house coolness competition , I think many of us students have problems with the "you gotta be po-mo" coolness factor. Like that student that wrote about Michael's afternoon"
Michael says, "Yes, alt.hypertext is full of complaints about the theory talk, which I have some sympathy with, though there seems little recognition that the theory was a necessary wedge to pry open institutional constraints (like English depts and libraries, etc). This is part of the (wonderful) uniquity. There is also an intolerance on alt.hypertext for any discussion of htext pre-web (and for those who criticize the essentially static quality of the web as htext)"
Nigel says, "yes, the pre-web hypertext literature is fascinating, the early ones didn't have any functional systems, so they just ranged free. For instance, Bush didn't have a memex he could use, he didn't have anything approaching that functionality, so he just let his ideas escalate...""
Nancy says, "what is htext pre-web"?
Michael says, "Htext pre-web" is everything from Vannavar Bush onward"
Nigel says, "many html enthusiasts are stuck in html, the machine we have."
Michael says, "But Doug Engelbart did have Augment (and 100K documents online in the 60's)"