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Projection, where the machine of the media uses light and shadow to transmit the message. |
Recently, I read a blog entry about the non-linear nature of the web and it got me to reviewing my own observations about what influence that modern technologies, such as the web, and its precursors have had on how we frame our world.
What I read made observations on how we tell our stories where the events of the story unfold in the order that is most efficacious to understanding. It also references a book, called Everything Is Miscellaneous, that expounds on the subject of how we organize information in modern times.
The story, that you are about to read, talks about the use of time in the art of the narrative. Some early visionaries on the subject are surveyed along with some more modern approaches. Different technologies are surveyed that address the need for organizing and presenting information in narrative form. Finally, some themes or meta-patterns are presented that attempt to set the context for these innovations.
We make mental models of our world in an attempt to understand it. Jean Piaget called these models schemas in his theory of developmental psychology. According to him, each of us adapts to our world through an intricate dance of assimilation and accommodation. We assimilate new facts into our schemas and accommodate our schemas to fit new facts. Do you fill in or are you filled in?
We develop computer models that simulate our mental ones in order to better understand those mental models. One of the first computer models was the extremely simple Turing machine named after Alan Turing. This gedanken machine is composed of a tape, a read-write head, an action table, and a state register. The Turing machine is capable of parsing any string that is compliant with any type 0 formal language. Its simplicity is helpful in writing theories about the complexity of computing.
Other early computer models of interest are augmented transition networks and neural networks. The augmented transition network is a combination of the semantic network and the Turing machine. Where augmented transition networks focus on simulating what we think, neural networks focus on simulating how we think. Simplistically speaking, the brain is a network of neurons. Each neuron is composed of a nucleus, a cluster of dendrites, and an axon. When enough neurotransmitter reach the dendrites, a signal is fired down the axon which cause neurotransmitter to be secreted to other nerve cells. In this way, signals propagate from nerve to nerve. Neural networks are trainable data stores that simulate this electro-chemical process.
It was guerrilla ontologist Robert Anton Wilson who took these models to a whole new level when he introduced the social dimension of world modeling in his writings on the human consensus reality labyrinth. Where individual humans construct schemas of the world through adaptation, humanity in general create overlaid schemas, or labyrinths, when creating consensual models of the world. This is what we call the formation of culture.
Tony Buzan invented a type of diagram known as a mind map. Think of it as a radial outline that uses color and imagery. It has been said that the diagram is the instrument of thought. If that is true, then the mind map is the Swiss pocket knife of the diagram. The synergy of terminology, hierarchy, and art make mind mapping a very powerful tool for comprehending complex concepts and ideas. My favorite mind mapping software is FreeMind.
More recent computer models have advanced through the process of capturing ontologies which makes it easier to write systems that reason about knowledge. The semantic web (published by the World Wide Web Consortium) is a very ambitious yet practical effort in creating computer models that simulate and replicate human understanding. There is a language devoted to this also.
What you learn when interacting with these types of models depends on where you start and what turns you take along the way. Because of this, it is important to understand that the sequence in which you navigate through a complex model affects your experience of it. In other words, when it comes to learning, order matters.
There is a long history of technological advancement in humankind's quest to tell the story. The invention of the book presented the story in a very orderly and sequential way. It is possible for readers to review the table of contents and to skip chapters as desired yet the author's intent is to read the book from the beginning to the end. In this technology, it is up to the author to guess what the most efficacious order of facts to transmit understanding to the reader. Most authors choose a chronological ordering. Kurt Vonnegut Jr innovated on this approach in what is now called his infamous Tralfamadorian Structure which he first used in his book Slaughterhouse 5. In this approach, the central figure tells his story as he experiences it but he has become unstuck in time. Instead of living his life from the beginning to the end, he jumps around in his own life and lives it out of sequence.
What makes things interesting is that people are different and no two people have the same mental model of the world. Yet the writer can write and publish only one book at a time. How can the writer pick the most efficacious ordering of the facts for everyone?
An early computer technology to address this issue was the invention of text based games where the user would issue commands to navigate through the story. This graduated into a genre of literature for what is now called Interactive Fiction. In the book, you have chapters, pages, and paragraphs which you can chose to navigate through linearly or to skip around. With Interactive Fiction, it is the reader and not the writer who navigates through rooms or landscapes in the setting, in order to discover the next facts in the story. In the book, it is considered fair to assume that the reader is familiar with what went on prior to the page that the reader is currently on. No such proscription is advised in IF.
In the World Wide Web, most stories are not published as a single document. Instead, a story is published as a cluster of hyper linked pages. The term hyper link is used because clicking on a word or phrase from one page will take you to an entire page devoted to the subject. This mode of interactivity and non-linearity removed the burden of always having to best order the information from the author since the reader could easily chose what sequence he or she wanted to read the information in. This approach has merit since not everyone has the same schema. It stands to reason that no single ordering of facts would be optimal for everyone.
There is a trend in publishing web based content, particularly with corporate Intranets, of using a web portal on the front end and a digital CMS or Content Management System on the back end. What distinguishes a portal from other web based publishing applications is the home page or what is typically called the front door. In addition to navigation and search related features, the front door also features some previews or summaries of specific content in these little boxes. Clicking on an appropriate link within a box takes the user to that specific area of the application. A CMS allows the publisher of the content to organize the information in various hierarchical ways known as taxonomies. Advanced CMS software allows for polyhierarchical taxonomies or multiple, overlaid hierarchies all pointing to the same content. Each taxonomy is organized to serve a particular viewpoint. It is these polyhierarchical taxonomies that most closely fit the overlaid schemas of the human consensus reality labyrinth. One really interesting CMS that I recommend is plone.
What all of these technologies have in common is what usability experts call progressive disclosure. For publishing content, that usually means an initial presentation of a summary view of a complex data model and having the user navigate through the space of the content through ever increasing levels of detail.
A central theme to time and the art of the narrative is the idea of comprehension as journey. Where you start in the investigation of a world and where you go determines your experience of it. Like most world class cities, models of human cognition are not rectilinear. It is not so easy to unlearn a thing once learned. Ask anyone who has been through a painful divorce. Again, order matters.
This brings me to my last observation on time and the art of the narrative. It is what I call the flashlight theory of consciousness. Imagine a map of everything that you have ever learned. You cannot possibly keep it all in consciousness at the same time. Now imagine a flashlight whose beam of light you could shine on that map. Where the light illuminates the map is what you can hold in your consciousness. You can adjust the flashlight for a wide beam, in which case you see more of the map but not as clearly. You can adjust the flashlight for a narrow beam, in which case you see less of the map but the part that you can see, you see in better detail and clarity. You can also move the flashlight. That part of the map that falls out of the beam is forgotten and the part of the map that falls into the beam is learned or remembered.
