23.57, Thursday 22 Jul 2004

I've just heard that the Blogging tutorial at the Hypertext 04 conference that I'm doing with Noah Wardrip-Fruin is definitely going ahead (guest starring Mark Bernstein, what's more!). I went to the this conference last year, HT03, and it's an eye-opener (my notes). A different take - and, I'd argue, a structural, academic and mature take - on the medium we're mucking around with every day. It's good to be reminded that the www isn't where it ends, and there are a lot more systems out there, ready to inspire us. That's why I think the weblog and hypertext worlds in particular need to meet up more. The weblog world because, well, stuff like page-per-post, permalinks, trackbacks and even comment threading are working around limitations in the type of hypertext that the www implements. We're still trying to figure out the problems, and there are loads of papers with solutions ripe for the reading. And the hypertext crowd? Mainly because I think people will take to weblogs very quickly. But also a bit because I want to see what will happen.

Anyway, Hypertext 2004 is in Santa Cruz this year, and runs August 9-13. Let me know if you're going and if you fancy meeting up? (And if you fancy coming to the blogging tutorial, that would be cool too.)