{ 2001.07.27 } The shock of it is bad enough, the abrupt halt of conversation as the phone is snatched away, the smack round the head as the cyclist goes past. But the worst thing, even apart from the ten horrible minutes with a helpful stranger trying to find my glasses, even apart from my flatmates telling me who to phone, or telling my mum, or walking home sans commication sans information, the worst thing is not being able to see.

{ 07.26 } ZigZag... hypertext implementation by Ted Nelson, from whose head sprung Xanadu. I've had an insight about this today, and I'd like to remember what it is, so I'm going to try and explain the application. This tutorial is surprisingly good, but I'll go further here.

ZigZag is like a spreadsheet but infinitely generalised. In a spreadsheet there are two dimensions, rows and columns. A cell is always in both of these two dimensions. In ZigZag a cell can be in many dimensions, but you're not limited to two. In the terminology of ZigZag, a cell also has a rank, which tells you how far along the dimension it is (this is like how far down a column you are in a spreadsheet). A dimension (essentially just a list of cells) can even loop round on itself, and a cell being in one dimension doesn't at all affect its ability to be in any place in any other -- there is no spatial quality in ZigZag. The final big generalisation is that you can declare dimensions yourself. There's a good indication of all of this in a diagram in the zzProperties section of the tutorial, but I really do recommend you read it all.

So how does this apply to hypertext? Xanadu and World Wide Web are both hypertext applications but Xanadu can do things like transpublishing, which in a very basic sense could mean that a block of text can be included from anywhere on the "web" (web in a generic sense, not the www) in another page -- that is, included live, so changes, annotations, micropayments for viewing and so on, are carried along with it. Now, this is an important bit: What Dirk is to World Wide Web, ZigZag is to Xanadu.

Really, that was important. A lot of what we do on the www is nodes-and-arcs, or words-on-sticks, or simply just the interconnectedness of all things. I promise you a lot of the stuff that's made you go "shit that's so cool" is just this. At it's fundamental level is a relationship I've called, in the past, the linkbit, which is the node/connection/node triplet (the www is actually simpler than this because it only allows for one kind of connection). Why is there a lot of this stuff around? Probably because the www itself works like that and it's infected our imaginations.

Now ZigZag, Xanada, and by implication the truer forms of hypertext (such as the Memex) are more far reaching than this -- they follow trails.

I'm just going to explain an alternative way of looking at ZigZag and then I'll tie it back in: Think of ZigZag as a collection of nodes. A dimension then is just a piece of string going through many nodes, and the rank just the order in which they're on this string. Or instead of string, read trail. The fundamental unit of a better hypertext is the trail, an expanded linkbit which is basically a node/connection/rinse-and-repeat list.

Trails are an useful navigational aid because you can follow other people's trails; you can see entry and exit points; you can construct a list of several pages leading to a greater understanding than just pointing at one. You can see where many trails merge, popular browsing routes, places off the beaten track maybe. Trails provide context.

So that's my insight: ZigZag is trails, and ZigZag isn't something special and on its own. It's part of a greater idea because the idea came from the same school of thought as Xanadu.

Why trails aren't happening on the www: Because although the W3C are working on new kinds of links, they're still based around the linkbit, just making the nodes more specific and the connection types more varied.

Why trails are happening on the www: Despite what I just said, they are coming about in a limited way. This harks back to something I said before about weblogs. Imagine all the posts in all weblogs in a single space. All the posts are nodes. Then a weblog is a trail through this place, ordered chronologically. In the words of ZigZag, a post is a cell, a dimension is a weblog, and the rank is the date. And this gives us ways forward: Think about when dimensions/trails cross and you could follow other people's routes. Categorising posts is just another way of setting dimensions, and commenting on somebody else's post is transpublishing. So we're getting there, in a fashion, and maybe it's possible to bring in trails by the backdoor with RSS and all the rest.

Another thought: Trails effectively turn the web into a map, instead of just a connected graph. And if it's a map, then we can use the universal interface. How would the web change if you could be at a page and navigate around by typing "follow interconnected_weblog" or "nearby"? Wouldn't that be a worthy addition to the Back button?

{ } "At first there were attempts to add some kind of interesting new spin on the formula. One of the guests is a plant. One of the guests is a vegetable. One of the guests is just an irremediable shit. None of them worked."

Dan is oh so very topical today at Big Upsideclown. Unable to cope with reality (tv): Bigger, Better, Brother.

{ } Wow, that Googlematic MetaFilter thread has been great. There's been great thoughts, a web-browsing AIMbot called metalynxbot has been written, and some cool links have come up -- including, E Ching, I Ching readings across many wireless platforms.

{ 07.25 } Calvin & Hobbes is Fight Club [via MeFi]. Two of my favourite things.

{ } The globe's eight doges: Pravda disses the Western world Russia style. "Shortly before they departed to their palaces of intransigence..." Brilliant.

{ } Sounds of Passion. Wow. Check out that track listing. [via pants.]

{ 07.24 } Okay then, so Googlematic fell over really badly. I'm rewriting it and hopefully it'll be back up in the next couple of days.

...or maybe not: "Your client does not have permission to get URL /xml from this server. See the Terms of Service posted on www.google.com." Seems that they're on to me, and have blocked my IP (the Terms of Service prohibit any kind of automated querying or reformatting of the results). Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Guess I'd better write something else next time.

[clarification: My script received that response when trying to access /xml -- it wasn't a direct message or anything. I've mailed Google to say what the script was doing. Let's see what they say.]

{ } A paper exploring the most widely used program pattern and high-level software architecture of them all -- the Big Ball of Mud: a "haphazardly structured, sprawling, sloppy, duct-tape and bailing wire, spaghetti code jungle", and also the way a lot of projects end up, for reasons given in the essay. Funny.

{ } (A little 'site news: Googlematic had a mention on MetaFilter today. The bot's holding up fine, which is good.

And since blackbeltjones linked to it, I had the incentive to add commenting to my note The sameness of interfaces. Just in case, y'know, anybody wanted to say anything.

Message ends.)

{ } Infobot is a Perl 'bot that sits on IRC, answering basic questions and looking things up on the web. The Infobot Guide has more.

{ 07.23 } Okay then. Do you use AIM? Do you use Google? Then try messaging this week's project, googlematic. I'll leave it running until the server falls down. Have fun. (Oh, you can AIM me on metadirk, should you desire.)

(And as much as I'm loath to admit it, I was chatting with Tom while I was building the AIMbot for other reasons, and it was his idea to hook it into Google. Although I'm sure I would have thought of it eventually...)

{ } "For some months now I have been aware of people looking at me differently, strangely. Perhaps it's the new glasses, the built-up shoes, the scarring. It could be any number of things."

New Upsideclown for a brand new week. Somebody's been asking Victor, You're not going to put this in a clown are you? (marks out of 10 included).

{ } Oh now, baby, this is good: the Tree of Life Web Project (beta). Tree view at each level (as a Java applet), copious links to more information and papers, doesn't use the taxonomy I learnt at school but a more flexible groups and leaves system. Man oh man. The technical description hints at open sourcing the whole thing in the future (the data too? Please!), but the coolest thing is navigating the tree to find, say, Homo sapiens -- start from the Root of all Life and work your way along. Brilliant.

{ } Okay then, so I vaguely remember from school the divisions of biological taxonomy: Kingdom > phylum > class > order > family > genus > species. And I can find the top level Five Kingdoms: Monera, Protista, Fungi, Plantae, Animalia. But where can I find the entire thing? I mean, I'm sure scientists are working on this the whole time, the whole shebang, the entire Tree of Life itself, I want to read it. But I can't find it. Where is it? Does it even exist? Do we have any biologists in the house? Could ya let me know?

{ } Peeple of zee wurl, relax!