Dr. Johnson
Dr J: Quite the trip. I've been around my beloved London all day, amazed at the contraptions called 'cars' and the voice-transmission devices referred to as 'mobile phones'.
But enough of this, I am a man of letters, what have you done to the written word?
Guide: Sir, we now have what we call the 'world wide web', where, through 'computers', which you can think of as being magical books, you can extract any text at will, from billions and billions of pages!
Dr J: Wondrous indeed! And how does it work?
Guide: Well, someone writes a link around some text, and when you press down upon this text, the magical book automatically transports the document it links to, straight to you!
Dr J: That is most impressive! So when I come across a new word, something invented in the last two hundred years say, I can but press down upon it and bring forth a modern dictionary?
Guide: Only if someone has previously linked that word to its entry in the dictionary ...
Dr J: But it is already linked, implicitly!
Guide: Implicitly is not enough I am afraid Sir. Someone has to write instructions by hand for the word to become active, as well as the exact address of the word in the dictionary.
Alternatively, you could re-type the word in the dictionary. Or copy and paste it...
Dr J: Copy and paste? Without scissors? I am not quite sure I follow.
Guide: Never mind, it's a bit odd ...
Dr J: Hmm. Does this mean then, that only special words, labored over by hand, have been strung together with other words or documents? That I can only interact with these special words?
That I can do nothing with other words? That can't be so, surely!
Guide: It is true ...
Dr J: These special words so linked, are they only shown by the being underlined, or can I see them as proper links, as lines connecting documents?
Guide: No ...
Dr J: Hmm.. What of all the other words, what can you do with them?
Guide: Well, you can easily copy them so somewhere else, akin to having them magically appear on another document on your magical book.
Dr J: That's it? You cannot select text and instruct the magical book to translate it say?
Guide: No ...
Dr J: What about instructing the magical book to locate the text in the discourse of personal diaries, such as the 'web-logs' I have heard about?
Guide: No ...
Dr J: What about searching the rest of the 'web' of knowledge for other occurrences?
Guide: No, you have to 'copy' the text and paste it into a search box. Or re-type it. Same as when looking something up in a dictionary, encyclopedia, reference database and so on...
However, great effort has been expended to make these searches of keywords on the web very fast indeed; less than a second in most cases.
Dr.J: Searching is important. But "knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."
It is important that we can actually read the text, not just know where it is - the process of reading is at least as important as the process of finding the information to read, have you forgotten this?
In aid of reading large amounts of text, can you at least change the way the 'computer' magical book shows information, for example, only showing paragraphs with certain text?
Guide: No ...
Dr J: Can it at least highlight certain terms in specified colors?
Guide: N o...
Dr J: Can maps be shown based on addresses?
Guide: No ...
Dr J: Can this computer share selected text through automatically 'blogging' or 'emailing' selections?
Guide: No. You'd have to copy first the text, then the address it came from and then fill in the subject line, or topic of the message.
Dr J: That's not so bad then. What about auto-magic linking, where say, the web-page of a particular company can automatically be called upon when asked, even if it's not linked by hand?
Guide: No ...
Dr J: What about printing out on paper, only required the required selections of text?
Guide: No ...
Dr J: I apologize for my inquisitiveness, I see such opportunity here, how long has this web been around?
Guide: For about fifteen years.
Dr J: And how has it been improved upon, apart from having greatly grown in size?
Guide: It looks prettier, pages have nicer layouts and typography.
Dr J: But the magic behind the words?!
Guide: Sir, soon the web will be 'semantically rich' and 'artificial intelligence' will help us understand what is out there
Dr. J: My friend, "it is common to overlook what is near, by keeping the eye fixed upon something remote. In the same manner, present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges, and intent upon future advantages."
My suggestion; make all the text magic, all the text alive. Now. It's not such a chore compared to making it intelligent!
But anyway, "the natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope."
I have hope that all words will be allowed to flourish in their natural majesty, to become the object of all kinds of useful interactions.
