You have it.  When hypertext is used as a database, one 
is using an old form of a database (dates back to the 
sixties in computer media, and to medieval scholars 
in paper media).  The cart metaphor is to illustrate 
that age does not equal obsolescence because the application 
determines the utility.   As a GUI, there are similar 
considerations.  GUIs have been through an evolution 
in which early GUIs (think Englebart and Sutherland) 
used properties such as link controls in context of 
content that were later improved at Xerox PARC, 
largely discarded in a MACINTOSH, then revived 
in the primitive Mosaic browser.  Functionality 
such as Previous (back) and Next, History lists, etc 
should be considered similarly.

Would an aggregator be retrograde?  What are the 
precedents?

len

From: bryan [mailto:bry@[...].com]

> One has to understand that hypertext is a retrograde database 
> with navigation controls embedded in context.  

I always have problems when the dialogue gets too rarified, unless I'm
the one doing the rarifying of course. Can you add some support to the
term retrograde in that sentence?

> That doesn't 
> mean it isn't useful.  Carts in some cultures are a major 
> means of transportation and hauling.  In others, they are 
> children's wagons.

The metaphor seems strained; for technology I often think metaphors are
not the way to draw relations, as often a too vast a leap of cognition
(for me at any rate) is required. Perhaps allegory would be better here,
actually I'm getting confused, is it the hypertext that is a retrograde
database that is like a cart?

Your argument seems to be that hypertext is analogous to a cart in that
a cart is an outmoded form of transportation, I doubt that anyone has
ever existed that has called a form of transportation x outmoded without
a form of transportation y in mind for replacing it, what is the form of
transportation y in this case and what are its benefits? 




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