Hypertext evolving

[this essay was supposed to be my first experiment with Storify.com, but it didn't work the way i anticipated]

first
(at the beginning of history)
we codified speech into written alphabets
with small finite numbers of characters (A = Consonants + Vowels)
variously combined into
syllables (S = C*V*C)
variously combined into
words (W ≈ S*S*S...)
variously combined into
(mostly-linear) texts
(T ≈ W*W*W*W*W*W*W... ≈ W^N)

texts could be
copied (requiring skill and effort and time)
edited
illustrated
formatted
named
cited
annotated
translated

special characters
(like 'inline' illustrations)
could be freely explored

spelling slowly standardized

some classic literary texts
achieved the status of art

printing made copying almost infinitely easier
(requiring different skills and less time and effort)
and citations simpler/neater
(but made illustrations significantly harder)

some special characters and formatting
like punctuation marks
were slowly/imperfectly standardized

most texts had difficult bits
copyists could add notes to clarify them

researching these notes might take time and skill and effort
while the results might be summarized briefly

for a given text
for a given audience
each difficult bit
demanded some size of note

reference works made such research easier

some authors used obscurantism to inflate their status
maybe even favoring sorts of difficulties
not yet resolved in easily accessible reference works

(joyce in ulysses must have been anticipating
about a paragraph of notes per sentence
and in finnegans wake
a paragraph per word)

marginal notes were somewhat standardized
(authorship of notes could get ambiguous)
((literary texts (including joyce) cannibalized and parodied such notes))

electronic text files
quickly standardized on ascii ( ≈ C+V+P = A+P)
with a handful of punctuation marks
and formatting codes
(keyboards laid these out in a 2D grid)

the project of creating free etexts
of all past works
quickly accelerated
(requiring limited skill, assisted by dumb AI, then smarter AI)

formatting italics was the worst of many small issues

various incompatible ebook formatting standards were proposed

html added (a little) more formatting to ascii
and primitive but powerful linking

html co-evolved with web browsers

various unsatisfactory efforts were made
to implement marginal notes as unobtrusive html links
with popup text-bubbles as the default design
and with joyce as the acid test

(count the number of clicks required
to be sure of not missing any notes
and strive to minimize this number!)

wikipedia became the default annotation host
(embedding wikipedia links was almost redundant for anyone who'd mastered select-right-click-search)

unicode (3*2^16) vastly expanded ascii (2^7)

bandwidth suddenly got so cheap
images and videos and maps (and even the hosting of complete sites)
became effectively free

new sorts of reference sites were added daily

(embedding these as links or media now took short sequences of keystrokes and mouse commands)

the first priority for digitizing the finnegans wake notes
was searchability
but fweet.org chose not to include
offsite links, multimedia, or genetic layering
so tim finnegan's first blog tried to fill these gaps

the success of a second experiment
an interlinear ulysses with bounteous embedded media
eventually inspired an interlinear fw sequel
quickly supplemented by a parallel
genetically-layered approach

for joyce
it now takes several hours per page
(minimum 'due diligence')
to google through most all available resources
and doublecheck others' notes

these semantic 'pixels' fall into increasingly-clear categories
like wikipedia's infoboxes and google's cards

eg literary allusions can be linked
not just to the appropriate page
of the original text
but even to the edition joyce knew
or to the earliest surviving manuscripts

music and dance allusions can be linked to videos
of the closest approximate performance
or at least to sheet music and lyrics

audiobook versions and podcasts can be embedded
as well as illustrative sound effects

specialized maps can be easily created and embedded
for any cluster of landmarks
and streetviews of locations now
and historic maps

in joyce's special case
ireland has posted handwritten census forms from 1901 and 1911
with age occupation religion and family
for almost every real individual he mentions

thousands of contemporary photos are now online;
newspaper and magazine ads;
illustrations of clothing styles and technologies

turns of phrase can graphed across time;
pronunciations of words can be clarified and illustrated

so
for joyceans, at least,
popup bubbles are passé

only interlinear design is flexible enough