DEEP HYPERTEXT, DEEP LITERATURE

Theodor Holm Nelson
Oxford Internet Institute and Project Xanadu

Everybody thinks they understand electronic documents-- Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, The Web.  These possibilities are incredibly limited.  In a supposed electronic world, they imitate paper-- and less.

What we have now is not really paper simulation.  It simulates the printed page, but not real paper.  Real paper you can write on, attach sticky notes to, cut up and rearrange.  These are not allowed in today's text systems; instead, today's electronic text simulates paper under glass, unreachable, unchangeable, unmarkable.  It is often said that with computers we generate more paper than ever; and this is necessary because we cannot do things in the electronic version that we could otherwise.

What if we could start over?  Imagine that we are starting over.  Forget books.  Forget magazines.  Imagine writing and graphics free-form in space-- the original hypertext ideas (see Xanadu Archive page for our 1960s designs).  And especially with today's 3D graphics power, as in today's video games.

With anything possible, will we really try to simulate paper?  I don't think so.  We will try to choose new forms of writing, new representations, new units, and new views, including multidocument overviews and zooms.

It's time to start over.  This is the objective of the new DEEPLIT(tm) designs, now in preparation.  Stay tuned.

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