sábado, 2 de janeiro de 2010
Dear Paulo,No I don't have finished to evaluate your works in the wiki and during the course but it's not the same kind of evaluation so it doesn't have any impact on your final exam. The final exam is an individual one and is based only on parts 1, 2 and 4 of the course, with 2 questions : one theoretical and another one more practical.For the final grade, all evaluations will be important : your activity during the course, your collective expertise and the individual exam. Please refer to my message about it : http://www.fcsh-elearning.edu.pt/acient/mod/resource/view.php?id=1014.Best regardsLuc Masso
Resposta do Prof:
Je suis surpris par le contenu de votre message étant donné que je vais respecter le contenu du cours que je vous avais annoncé en début de semestre. Je l'mensagem mon explique clairement dans publié fin décembre à ce sujet: http://www.fcsh-elearning.edu.pt/acient/mod/resource/view.php?id=9444L'ensemble du contenu du cours sera mais délivré donc pour des questions de calendrier qui s'est raccourci cette année (début les examens auront lieu et non début Janvier Février), je ne pas vous pourrai évaluer sur l'exercice d'publié perícia dans la partie 5 de mon cours. Je vous donc propor malgré tout le début de 2010 faire pour les étudiants qui le souhaitent mais cela ne pas comptera nota finale dans votre simplement.Pour les partes 6 a 9 mentionnez que vous, je les publierai comme je l'ai fait chaque année durant le mois de janvier 2010 et je Continuerai à assurer un feed-back via les forums mail ou par. Pour des questions de délai, il aurait été trop densa de publier l'intégralité des contenus avant fin décembre.Tout respecté soros, rassure je vous! Il faut simplement distinguer le calendrier des examens qui se termine début Janvier et celui de la fin du cours qui continuera durant le mois de Janvier.Enfin, j'ai toujours dans les forums répondu aux questions que les étudiants me posaient InterAgir avec pour eux.J'espère vous avoir Rassure et merci de transmettre ce message aux autres étudiants si vous le souhaitez. Je reste à votre disposition pour en reparler.Bien cordialement,Luc Massou
Cher Monsieur,
Comment allez-vous, Monsieur, respecter le contenu de votre cours, si, en ce moment, je pense, tout comme moi, tout le monde est accablé par les examens. J'espérais que les contenus des cours fussent enseignes dans les délais du premier semestre.
«Pour des questions de délai, il aurait été trop densa de publier l'intégralité des contenus avant fin décembre. » Mais qu'est-ce-que c'est ça? C'est n'importe quoi! Est-ce qu'on ne vous a pas datas informé des des examens? Quelle est cette organização?!
C'est incroyable! On a été datas informé des des examens début du mois d'Octobre 2009 et par ce que je lis, les profs ne sont pas informes de examens leurs propres? C'est-à-dire que début Octobre n'aviez nous pas l'Information des examens datas des agencer mieux pour les contenus du cours!
Vous avez raison: C'est bien malin de la part de l'université, les cours termineront le 30 Janvier 2010, tout comme l'évaluation. Que comprenez Est-ce que c'est vous importante pour pouvoir être un étudiant évalué dans tous les contenus d'un cours?
Je ne suis pas du tout rassurée, et ne vous en faites pas, monsieur, les collègues liront certainement ce que vous avez transmissão. Et ce que je peux conclure, que c'est l'année dernière, c'était bien organisé mieux que cette année, malheureusement pour nous.
Bien cordialement,
Je suis surpris par le contenu de votre message étant donné que je vais respecter le contenu du cours que je vous avais annoncé en début de semestre. Je l'mensagem mon explique clairement dans publié fin décembre à ce sujet: http://www.fcsh-elearning.edu.pt/acient/mod/resource/view.php?id=9444L'ensemble du contenu du cours sera mais délivré donc pour des questions de calendrier qui s'est raccourci cette année (début les examens auront lieu et non début Janvier Février), je ne pas vous pourrai évaluer sur l'exercice d'publié perícia dans la partie 5 de mon cours. Je vous donc propor malgré tout le début de 2010 faire pour les étudiants qui le souhaitent mais cela ne pas comptera nota finale dans votre simplement.Pour les partes 6 a 9 mentionnez que vous, je les publierai comme je l'ai fait chaque année durant le mois de janvier 2010 et je Continuerai à assurer un feed-back via les forums mail ou par. Pour des questions de délai, il aurait été trop densa de publier l'intégralité des contenus avant fin décembre.Tout respecté soros, rassure je vous! Il faut simplement distinguer le calendrier des examens qui se termine début Janvier et celui de la fin du cours qui continuera durant le mois de Janvier.Enfin, j'ai toujours dans les forums répondu aux questions que les étudiants me posaient InterAgir avec pour eux.J'espère vous avoir Rassure et merci de transmettre ce message aux autres étudiants si vous le souhaitez. Je reste à votre disposition pour en reparler.Bien cordialement,Luc Massou
Cher Monsieur,
Comment allez-vous, Monsieur, respecter le contenu de votre cours, si, en ce moment, je pense, tout comme moi, tout le monde est accablé par les examens. J'espérais que les contenus des cours fussent enseignes dans les délais du premier semestre.
«Pour des questions de délai, il aurait été trop densa de publier l'intégralité des contenus avant fin décembre. » Mais qu'est-ce-que c'est ça? C'est n'importe quoi! Est-ce qu'on ne vous a pas datas informé des des examens? Quelle est cette organização?!
C'est incroyable! On a été datas informé des des examens début du mois d'Octobre 2009 et par ce que je lis, les profs ne sont pas informes de examens leurs propres? C'est-à-dire que début Octobre n'aviez nous pas l'Information des examens datas des agencer mieux pour les contenus du cours!
Vous avez raison: C'est bien malin de la part de l'université, les cours termineront le 30 Janvier 2010, tout comme l'évaluation. Que comprenez Est-ce que c'est vous importante pour pouvoir être un étudiant évalué dans tous les contenus d'un cours?
Je ne suis pas du tout rassurée, et ne vous en faites pas, monsieur, les collègues liront certainement ce que vous avez transmissão. Et ce que je peux conclure, que c'est l'année dernière, c'était bien organisé mieux que cette année, malheureusement pour nous.
Bien cordialement,
sexta-feira, 1 de janeiro de 2010
Unidade 4
a)
Definition
References : Pierre MORELLI, “Blogs et médias, quels rapports aujourd’hui : essai de typologie », EUTIC 2007 international conference, Athens (please find the complete paper in a separate file)
As Pierre MORELLI mentions it, blogs are “media technologies which articulate functions of information (writing of texts, storing information) and communication (deposits of comments, direct links towards other blogs - blogroll -), which automate the contents’ implementation (syndication) and introduce a reciprocity into the direction of information flow (push + pull)”. Thus blogs affect in a notable way the relationship between emission and reception, they take part in the form’s transformation of the public, from a formless mass to a whole of individuals. On the one hand, authors of blogs, on the other hand, readers, Net surfers, bloggers or “simple readers”, sometimes brought to engage the dialog through deposits of comments.
Pierre MORELLI considers that blogs question how media actually work : emergence of individual media of masses ? Improvement of existing media mechanisms ? Birth of new communication diagrams ? The public of blogs takes share in the construction of information. It is not any more the abstract figure of ideal receiver but the real individual in the singularity of its tastes and acts, therefore of its participation and/or its media contribution. Reception and emission modes are also upset since any receiver becomes a potential transmitter.
Always according to the same author, the relation to information meets other fundamental modifications : individualization of reception, automation of procedures by data processing. “To the logic of flow in traditional media succeeds a logic of action based on initiative framed by the modular choice available, a reticular offer which articulates contributions of several types and origins in a complex, syncretic and sometimes reciprocal way. The receiver takes an active share in selection and organization of information. Better still, user is now able to act directly on it, under the seal of comments or by taking part in the drafting of contents put on line.”
Joël DE ROSNAY (please see links after this text) joined the analysis of Pierre MORELLI and proposes new definitions corresponding to the current stakes of the numerical media :
- “infocapitalists” = holders of creation, production and diffusion means for informational contents under copyrights, generally under digital form. They force users and purchasers to use vectors of diffusion or distribution they control (big television channels, editors, music majors… = mass media).
- “pronetarian” or “pronetariat” (of the Greek pro = “in front of, before, favorable to”, and of English Net = “network”) = new class of users of numerical networks able to produce, diffuse, sell digital non owners contents, being based on “new economy” principles to create important flows of visitors on websites, to allow free accesses, to make pay very personalized services at low prices, to exploit effects of amplification on the web… They are more and more in competition with traditional “infocapitalists”, to which they do not make any more confidence, to get information, to listen to music, to see videos, to read books or to communicate by telephone.
- “media of masses” = new large and distributed modes, coming from “pronetarian” expression. They use digital techniques of collaborative creation, connection and exchange which gradually supplant some of traditional vectors of mass media.
Typologies
References :
Dominique CARDON, Hélène DELAUNAY-TETEREL, « La production de soi comme technique relationnelle. Un essai de typologie des blogs par leurs publics », 2006, Réseaux, n° 138, LavoisierLaurence ALLARD, « Termitières numériques ou les blogs comme technologie agrégative du soi », 2005, Multitudes, n°21, Les Belles Lettres (published on line in 2006)Rebecca BLOOD, The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog, 2002, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, MA, USA.Rebecca BLOOD, « Weblogs and Journalism in the Age of Participatory Media », 2003, Norman Reports, vol. 57, n° 3,
We mention below typologies of blogs identified by Pierre MORELLI in his paper (read its complete text for more details).
According to Rebecca BLOOD (2002), 3 macro-categories would be enough to include the main trends in blogs:
- personal newspapers, which publish personal feelings,
- notebooks, whose contents are more sophisticated (like on line essays, syntheses…)
- filters = interfaces which have a purely utility relation with information (editorial monitoring, events annoucements,…).
Always according to BLOOD (2003), she identifies 4 types of blogs which would make journalism :
- blogs held by journalists,
- blogs proposed by professionals about professional issues,
- blogs written by individuals who are witnesses of significant events,
- those which offer direct links to news.
According to the Italian blogger Giorgio Nova, we can classify blogs according to the dominant activity of their author on the Web:
- “hunters” (or explorers, gatherers) = expert in art to find information, to flush out innovations of any kind (quotations, hyperlinks). They are reactive and publish in a very regular way. Principal interest = to offer to Net surfers personal paths through the informational “magma” of the Web, like a press review.
- “weavers” (or farmers) = proposes longer and less frequent articles. Their first concern is to formalize meaningful contents starting from collected information, which they take time to give in form, to articulate, to confront with various points of view found on the web.
- “chamanes” = great capacity of extrapolation, they can build a page from very few data. They are narrators, poets of the Web who apprehend the writing, not like an expression form but like an object in itself. For them, the Web is a wonderful window display, a exposure place of testimonys, to make their “poietic” skills more visible.
According to Laurence ALLARD (2006), blogs are more than setting on line diaries. They bring to think “a new articulation between spaces, methods and conceptualizations of relation between oneself and oneself in writing process”. For individual that they are, contributions fall under a “polyphonic dynamics” and form a “large autobiographical intertext”.
Dominique CARDON and Hélène DELAUNAY-TETEREL (2006) distinguish four trends in blogs :
- intimist blogs = exhibition of his interiority which engages the author in a process of recognition based on anonymous and interpersonal relationships, controlled by the author in a certain way, i.e. with a certain distance (comments only addressed to the author, no dialogs between readers),
- familiar blogs = more opened to dialog with readers, they describe environment and/or daily activities of the author (relational network is primarily made by close relations),
- community blogs = crystallizes contents and exchanges around some aspects of author’s profile (its skills, abilities…). They build a community identity starting from confrontation of experiments, shared practices (exhibition of personal collections, sharing of collected contents, subjective exchanges about common cultural practices…),
- citizen blogs = the statement is completely detached from the author’s personality. Blogs of distanciation, of open discussion and criticism, privileging a citizen approach of subjects, they prohibit any community affiliation by principle.
Lastly, Pierre MORELLI proposes his own “visual typology” for blogs :
Here are the explanation he gives of the various tops in the previous figure :
(1) very personal and very committed newspaper (the blogger gives his opinion about all the news)
(2) co-construction of a general-interest, contributive and impersonal resources’ space,
(3) resources’ space relating to a very specific set of themes (only facts, without comment nor opinion),
(4) thematic, objective, contributive and impersonal resources’ space but co-edited by several authors,
(5) citizen forum of ideas’ exchange without specific set of themes,
(6) blog of a consultant, asserted expert in one specific field,
(7) participative democracy.
Complementary links to consult :
- table of contents of a special issue of Norman Reports review, with a chapter about “Weblogs and Journalism” (papers are downloable in Pdf files by clicking on their titles).
- http://www.technorati.com/ = a famous search engine for blogs, currently tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.
- definition of vlogs in Wikipedia, which are “video blogs”, taking advantage of web syndication to allow distribution of videos over the Internet (using R.S.S. or Atom syndication formats, for instance) and playback on mobile devices and personal computers (podcasting).
- Steve Garfield vlog (as an example)
Complementary texts to read :
To go further on this subject, you can read 2 famous books (one in French, another one in English) that are now available online :
- « La révolte du pronétariat », written by Joël DE ROSNAY in 2005 (Fayard) and entirely on line since June 2006, describes in details current social changes in the media with development of Internet for the masses.
- « We the Media », published by Dan GILLMOR in 2004 (O’Reilly) and now on line. « This book is about journalism’s transformation from a 20th century mass-media structure to something profoundly more grassroots and democratic. It’s a story, first, of evolutionary change (…). This is also a story of a modern revolution, however, because technology has given us a communications toolkit that allows anyone to become a journalist at little cost and, in theory, with global reach. Nothing like this has ever been remotely possible before. »
b)
References :
Gautier POUPEAU, “Blogs et wikis. Quand le web s’approprie la société de l’information », 2006, BBF, t. 51, no 3, Paris
Julien LEVREL, « Wikipédia, un dispositif médiatique de publics participants », 2006, Réseaux, n° 138, UMLV/Lavoisier
Brian LAMB, « Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not », 2004, EDUCAUSE Review, 5, vol. 39, pp. 36–48, University of British Columbia
Definition
According to Gautier POUPEAU, wiki is a Web site allowing all the visitors to modify the various pages of them at will. The word “wiki” comes from the hawaian term “wiki wiki”, which means fast or informal. Wikis make it possible gradually to build a structured content by additions, constituting units, and an organized one, which facilitates the exploitation of it while taking again the principles of communication and division’s model of forums. Each page of a wiki thus contains a hypertext link which goes to a page making it possible to edit contents and thus to carry out modifications immediately without validation a priori by some authority. Design and structuring of the Web page are done by an easily understandable syntax. This method allows to create external and internal links, which are in fact new pages coming to be added to the existing wiki structure. Structure of a wiki Web site is not fixed a priori; it evolves/moves progressively by addition of pages in the site. To set up a wiki, we found, in the same way that for blogs, platforms called “farms” and application softwares called “engines of wikis”. Among most used engines in France, Xwiki makes turn the Xwiki.com farm, or Mediawiki, developed within the framework of Wikipedia, which is also used by Wikicities farm.
Uses
Always according to POUPEAU, wikis are well appropriate for all projects in which groupware is important. The most widespread use of wikis is the installation of encyclopedias, like the most known wiki on the Web, Wikipedia, launched by Jimmy Wales. Wikipedia aims to create an universal encyclopedia in free access and supplied with visitors of the site. Wikis interest also more and more companies which use it within the framework of knowledge management. Lastly, more and more softwares, in particular under free license, propose wikis to write documentation in a collaborative way.
The community aspect is obviously even more present for the wikis. But, unlike blogs, a community is established around a wiki and not around all the wikis. The “Wikipedians” speak about “wikification” to indicate the act to add links refering to various documents of the same wiki. The community aspect also results in meetings of bloggers or “wikists” in the “true life”.
The case of Wikipedia was more particularly analyzed by Julien LEVREL to establish the main operational features. He founds ten statutes of different users, with specific functionalities and additional rights of writing in Wikipedia device. The three principal statutes are the following :
- the anonymous participant = is not registered in the project and has neither a pseudo nor a personal page. He can consult, create and publish articles and pages of discussion.
- the recorded participant = reaches, through pseudo and a personal page, a configurable space according to his practices. He can consult, create and publish, but also rename pages, download files and reach a list of follow-ups. He is invited to take part in decision makings while discussing and voting proposals he considers adequate, or while proposing new ones.
- the statute of administrator = “Wikipedian” named by the community to ensure maintenance of the encyclopedia. Administrators can protect and unlock pages in writing, consult and restore removed pages, purge files of pages containing copyright violations, block and free IP addresses and, finally, consult a special list indexing the articles which no participant has on his list of follow-up.
According to LEVREL, in spite of a similar name, the administrator within Wikipedia is closer to the figure of regulator, because he is not a special contributor. He is subjected to the same principles as the whole of participants. Although he has additional functionalities, he cannot, in theory, make decision without agreement of the community. This political operation basically modifies the assumed hierarchy of electronic forums, decisions in Wikipedia device being legitimated by the respect of deliberative procedures and not by the recognized merit of the participants. Thus, the accession to administrator’s statute is carried out on the basis of voluntariate of participant who declares his candidature (in 3 specimens on the wiki and 1 in the list of discussion). This candidature opens a special wiki page dedicated to the election of administrators, which remembers to each participant the procedure of election. Thus, participant willing to become administrator must prove he’s reliable with respect to the encyclopedic horizon and must be recognized by his voters.
LEVREL explains finally why the rationalized memory (by data-processing techniques) constitutes the masterpiece of inspecting and security device of editorial space, by producing a whole of objective evidence relating to the participants and their commitments :
- history of an article = makes it possible to see the article’s lifecycle, step by step, and also to facilitate management of vandalism while returning to a previous version when necessary.
- list of follow-up = allows a recorded participant to supervise the articles he wishes, mainly those in which it took part. With each connection, the list of follow-up automatically informs him about modifications made by other participants, proposing indicators on nature of these changes (which, when, where, comments associated…).
- “recent modifications” = centralize on an uninterrupted up-to-date page, on the same principle as history, modifications related to the whole of articles in editorial space.
- an automatically updated list indexing the whole of articles which are not reproduced on any list of follow-up of recorded participants (Unwatchlist). This list mentions particularly many outlined articles and is one of the “dark regions” of Wikipedia.
Pedagogical uses
Concerning teaching uses of wikis, Vivian SYNTETA (2002) from TECFA (university of Geneva, Switzerland) notes that “research has shown that teachers and students can get very creative and develop innovative and very useful activities for learning, inspired from constructivism and socio-constructivism like :
- Information sources (simple websites easily created)
- Student assignement hand-in (with the advantage of peer ratings)
- collaborative web-writing (to co-construct collective knowledge)
- problem solving
- project spaces
- anchored collaboration (anchored newsgroup-like discussions for reviews)
- focused discussions (forum-like discussions)
- case libraries (projects "Hall of Fame")
- cross class/courses projects (interdisciplinary projects)
- community building among students (common interests, adventure games…)
- learning to collaborate (to change the individualism culture of traditional instruction).”
According to Brian LAMB, pedagogical challenges in using Wikis are the following :
- “Tracking work created in wiki spaces can become a logistical nightmare, and course management can spin out of control quickly if pages are allowed to spawn without some set of protocols to regulate or index them. (…). Seemingly minor contributions to a collaborative document may have major effects, effects that may be near impossible to assess fairly or even to detect.”
- “As with the security issue, most of the pedagogic dilemmas presented by wikis can be addressed by "traditional" management approaches. (…) Instructors may choose to establish categories, topics, and other prompts to direct student participation into more orderly channels”.
- “Indeed, an instructor could structure and regulate interaction to such an extent that the wiki is effectively transformed into a stripped-down course management system. (…) This process involves not just adjusting the technical configuration and delivery; it involves challenging the social norms and practices of the course as well.”
- “This particular challenge bears resemblance to the one posed by constructivist teaching philosophy. To truly empower students within collaborative or co-constructed activities requires the teacher to relinquish some degree of control over those activities. The instructor’s role shifts to that of establishing contexts or setting up problems to engage students. In a wiki, the instructor may set the stage or initiate interactions, but the medium works most effectively when students can assert meaningful autonomy over the process.”
Complementary links to consult :
- “Wikis Described in Plain English” : another good definition and frequently asked questions about wikis, with a very simple video about it.
- Wikispaces : easy-to-use Wikis for non-expert people.
- « Tourbus » : offers guided tours of wiki sites all over the world.
- "Westwood" : a well-known example of pedagogical use of a Wiki in classrooms.
Complementary texts to read :
- “Teaching and learning online with wikis”, 2004, Naomi AUGAR, Ruth RAITMAN and Wanlei ZHOU (School of Information Technology, Deakin University, ASCILITE 2004 Proceedings) : this paper illustrates how e-learning practitioners can use wiki technology to enhance social interaction amongst students online, for the dissemination of information to the student body, for building information repositories or for the collaborative production of documents.
- “Uses and Potentials of Wikis in the Classroom”, 2006, S. PIXY FERRIS, Hilary WILDER (Innovate, 5, vol. 2, Fischler School of Education and Human Services, Nova Southeastern University - free online login is required to see the complete article -) : this paper considers the uses of wikis in classroom from the perspective of praxis. It places the uses and potentials of wikis along a continuum on which the traditional print-based educational paradigm anchors one end and the secondary-oral paradigm the other.
a)
Definition
References : Pierre MORELLI, “Blogs et médias, quels rapports aujourd’hui : essai de typologie », EUTIC 2007 international conference, Athens (please find the complete paper in a separate file)
As Pierre MORELLI mentions it, blogs are “media technologies which articulate functions of information (writing of texts, storing information) and communication (deposits of comments, direct links towards other blogs - blogroll -), which automate the contents’ implementation (syndication) and introduce a reciprocity into the direction of information flow (push + pull)”. Thus blogs affect in a notable way the relationship between emission and reception, they take part in the form’s transformation of the public, from a formless mass to a whole of individuals. On the one hand, authors of blogs, on the other hand, readers, Net surfers, bloggers or “simple readers”, sometimes brought to engage the dialog through deposits of comments.
Pierre MORELLI considers that blogs question how media actually work : emergence of individual media of masses ? Improvement of existing media mechanisms ? Birth of new communication diagrams ? The public of blogs takes share in the construction of information. It is not any more the abstract figure of ideal receiver but the real individual in the singularity of its tastes and acts, therefore of its participation and/or its media contribution. Reception and emission modes are also upset since any receiver becomes a potential transmitter.
Always according to the same author, the relation to information meets other fundamental modifications : individualization of reception, automation of procedures by data processing. “To the logic of flow in traditional media succeeds a logic of action based on initiative framed by the modular choice available, a reticular offer which articulates contributions of several types and origins in a complex, syncretic and sometimes reciprocal way. The receiver takes an active share in selection and organization of information. Better still, user is now able to act directly on it, under the seal of comments or by taking part in the drafting of contents put on line.”
Joël DE ROSNAY (please see links after this text) joined the analysis of Pierre MORELLI and proposes new definitions corresponding to the current stakes of the numerical media :
- “infocapitalists” = holders of creation, production and diffusion means for informational contents under copyrights, generally under digital form. They force users and purchasers to use vectors of diffusion or distribution they control (big television channels, editors, music majors… = mass media).
- “pronetarian” or “pronetariat” (of the Greek pro = “in front of, before, favorable to”, and of English Net = “network”) = new class of users of numerical networks able to produce, diffuse, sell digital non owners contents, being based on “new economy” principles to create important flows of visitors on websites, to allow free accesses, to make pay very personalized services at low prices, to exploit effects of amplification on the web… They are more and more in competition with traditional “infocapitalists”, to which they do not make any more confidence, to get information, to listen to music, to see videos, to read books or to communicate by telephone.
- “media of masses” = new large and distributed modes, coming from “pronetarian” expression. They use digital techniques of collaborative creation, connection and exchange which gradually supplant some of traditional vectors of mass media.
Typologies
References :
Dominique CARDON, Hélène DELAUNAY-TETEREL, « La production de soi comme technique relationnelle. Un essai de typologie des blogs par leurs publics », 2006, Réseaux, n° 138, LavoisierLaurence ALLARD, « Termitières numériques ou les blogs comme technologie agrégative du soi », 2005, Multitudes, n°21, Les Belles Lettres (published on line in 2006)Rebecca BLOOD, The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog, 2002, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, MA, USA.Rebecca BLOOD, « Weblogs and Journalism in the Age of Participatory Media », 2003, Norman Reports, vol. 57, n° 3,
We mention below typologies of blogs identified by Pierre MORELLI in his paper (read its complete text for more details).
According to Rebecca BLOOD (2002), 3 macro-categories would be enough to include the main trends in blogs:
- personal newspapers, which publish personal feelings,
- notebooks, whose contents are more sophisticated (like on line essays, syntheses…)
- filters = interfaces which have a purely utility relation with information (editorial monitoring, events annoucements,…).
Always according to BLOOD (2003), she identifies 4 types of blogs which would make journalism :
- blogs held by journalists,
- blogs proposed by professionals about professional issues,
- blogs written by individuals who are witnesses of significant events,
- those which offer direct links to news.
According to the Italian blogger Giorgio Nova, we can classify blogs according to the dominant activity of their author on the Web:
- “hunters” (or explorers, gatherers) = expert in art to find information, to flush out innovations of any kind (quotations, hyperlinks). They are reactive and publish in a very regular way. Principal interest = to offer to Net surfers personal paths through the informational “magma” of the Web, like a press review.
- “weavers” (or farmers) = proposes longer and less frequent articles. Their first concern is to formalize meaningful contents starting from collected information, which they take time to give in form, to articulate, to confront with various points of view found on the web.
- “chamanes” = great capacity of extrapolation, they can build a page from very few data. They are narrators, poets of the Web who apprehend the writing, not like an expression form but like an object in itself. For them, the Web is a wonderful window display, a exposure place of testimonys, to make their “poietic” skills more visible.
According to Laurence ALLARD (2006), blogs are more than setting on line diaries. They bring to think “a new articulation between spaces, methods and conceptualizations of relation between oneself and oneself in writing process”. For individual that they are, contributions fall under a “polyphonic dynamics” and form a “large autobiographical intertext”.
Dominique CARDON and Hélène DELAUNAY-TETEREL (2006) distinguish four trends in blogs :
- intimist blogs = exhibition of his interiority which engages the author in a process of recognition based on anonymous and interpersonal relationships, controlled by the author in a certain way, i.e. with a certain distance (comments only addressed to the author, no dialogs between readers),
- familiar blogs = more opened to dialog with readers, they describe environment and/or daily activities of the author (relational network is primarily made by close relations),
- community blogs = crystallizes contents and exchanges around some aspects of author’s profile (its skills, abilities…). They build a community identity starting from confrontation of experiments, shared practices (exhibition of personal collections, sharing of collected contents, subjective exchanges about common cultural practices…),
- citizen blogs = the statement is completely detached from the author’s personality. Blogs of distanciation, of open discussion and criticism, privileging a citizen approach of subjects, they prohibit any community affiliation by principle.
Lastly, Pierre MORELLI proposes his own “visual typology” for blogs :
Here are the explanation he gives of the various tops in the previous figure :
(1) very personal and very committed newspaper (the blogger gives his opinion about all the news)
(2) co-construction of a general-interest, contributive and impersonal resources’ space,
(3) resources’ space relating to a very specific set of themes (only facts, without comment nor opinion),
(4) thematic, objective, contributive and impersonal resources’ space but co-edited by several authors,
(5) citizen forum of ideas’ exchange without specific set of themes,
(6) blog of a consultant, asserted expert in one specific field,
(7) participative democracy.
Complementary links to consult :
- table of contents of a special issue of Norman Reports review, with a chapter about “Weblogs and Journalism” (papers are downloable in Pdf files by clicking on their titles).
- http://www.technorati.com/ = a famous search engine for blogs, currently tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.
- definition of vlogs in Wikipedia, which are “video blogs”, taking advantage of web syndication to allow distribution of videos over the Internet (using R.S.S. or Atom syndication formats, for instance) and playback on mobile devices and personal computers (podcasting).
- Steve Garfield vlog (as an example)
Complementary texts to read :
To go further on this subject, you can read 2 famous books (one in French, another one in English) that are now available online :
- « La révolte du pronétariat », written by Joël DE ROSNAY in 2005 (Fayard) and entirely on line since June 2006, describes in details current social changes in the media with development of Internet for the masses.
- « We the Media », published by Dan GILLMOR in 2004 (O’Reilly) and now on line. « This book is about journalism’s transformation from a 20th century mass-media structure to something profoundly more grassroots and democratic. It’s a story, first, of evolutionary change (…). This is also a story of a modern revolution, however, because technology has given us a communications toolkit that allows anyone to become a journalist at little cost and, in theory, with global reach. Nothing like this has ever been remotely possible before. »
b)
References :
Gautier POUPEAU, “Blogs et wikis. Quand le web s’approprie la société de l’information », 2006, BBF, t. 51, no 3, Paris
Julien LEVREL, « Wikipédia, un dispositif médiatique de publics participants », 2006, Réseaux, n° 138, UMLV/Lavoisier
Brian LAMB, « Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not », 2004, EDUCAUSE Review, 5, vol. 39, pp. 36–48, University of British Columbia
Definition
According to Gautier POUPEAU, wiki is a Web site allowing all the visitors to modify the various pages of them at will. The word “wiki” comes from the hawaian term “wiki wiki”, which means fast or informal. Wikis make it possible gradually to build a structured content by additions, constituting units, and an organized one, which facilitates the exploitation of it while taking again the principles of communication and division’s model of forums. Each page of a wiki thus contains a hypertext link which goes to a page making it possible to edit contents and thus to carry out modifications immediately without validation a priori by some authority. Design and structuring of the Web page are done by an easily understandable syntax. This method allows to create external and internal links, which are in fact new pages coming to be added to the existing wiki structure. Structure of a wiki Web site is not fixed a priori; it evolves/moves progressively by addition of pages in the site. To set up a wiki, we found, in the same way that for blogs, platforms called “farms” and application softwares called “engines of wikis”. Among most used engines in France, Xwiki makes turn the Xwiki.com farm, or Mediawiki, developed within the framework of Wikipedia, which is also used by Wikicities farm.
Uses
Always according to POUPEAU, wikis are well appropriate for all projects in which groupware is important. The most widespread use of wikis is the installation of encyclopedias, like the most known wiki on the Web, Wikipedia, launched by Jimmy Wales. Wikipedia aims to create an universal encyclopedia in free access and supplied with visitors of the site. Wikis interest also more and more companies which use it within the framework of knowledge management. Lastly, more and more softwares, in particular under free license, propose wikis to write documentation in a collaborative way.
The community aspect is obviously even more present for the wikis. But, unlike blogs, a community is established around a wiki and not around all the wikis. The “Wikipedians” speak about “wikification” to indicate the act to add links refering to various documents of the same wiki. The community aspect also results in meetings of bloggers or “wikists” in the “true life”.
The case of Wikipedia was more particularly analyzed by Julien LEVREL to establish the main operational features. He founds ten statutes of different users, with specific functionalities and additional rights of writing in Wikipedia device. The three principal statutes are the following :
- the anonymous participant = is not registered in the project and has neither a pseudo nor a personal page. He can consult, create and publish articles and pages of discussion.
- the recorded participant = reaches, through pseudo and a personal page, a configurable space according to his practices. He can consult, create and publish, but also rename pages, download files and reach a list of follow-ups. He is invited to take part in decision makings while discussing and voting proposals he considers adequate, or while proposing new ones.
- the statute of administrator = “Wikipedian” named by the community to ensure maintenance of the encyclopedia. Administrators can protect and unlock pages in writing, consult and restore removed pages, purge files of pages containing copyright violations, block and free IP addresses and, finally, consult a special list indexing the articles which no participant has on his list of follow-up.
According to LEVREL, in spite of a similar name, the administrator within Wikipedia is closer to the figure of regulator, because he is not a special contributor. He is subjected to the same principles as the whole of participants. Although he has additional functionalities, he cannot, in theory, make decision without agreement of the community. This political operation basically modifies the assumed hierarchy of electronic forums, decisions in Wikipedia device being legitimated by the respect of deliberative procedures and not by the recognized merit of the participants. Thus, the accession to administrator’s statute is carried out on the basis of voluntariate of participant who declares his candidature (in 3 specimens on the wiki and 1 in the list of discussion). This candidature opens a special wiki page dedicated to the election of administrators, which remembers to each participant the procedure of election. Thus, participant willing to become administrator must prove he’s reliable with respect to the encyclopedic horizon and must be recognized by his voters.
LEVREL explains finally why the rationalized memory (by data-processing techniques) constitutes the masterpiece of inspecting and security device of editorial space, by producing a whole of objective evidence relating to the participants and their commitments :
- history of an article = makes it possible to see the article’s lifecycle, step by step, and also to facilitate management of vandalism while returning to a previous version when necessary.
- list of follow-up = allows a recorded participant to supervise the articles he wishes, mainly those in which it took part. With each connection, the list of follow-up automatically informs him about modifications made by other participants, proposing indicators on nature of these changes (which, when, where, comments associated…).
- “recent modifications” = centralize on an uninterrupted up-to-date page, on the same principle as history, modifications related to the whole of articles in editorial space.
- an automatically updated list indexing the whole of articles which are not reproduced on any list of follow-up of recorded participants (Unwatchlist). This list mentions particularly many outlined articles and is one of the “dark regions” of Wikipedia.
Pedagogical uses
Concerning teaching uses of wikis, Vivian SYNTETA (2002) from TECFA (university of Geneva, Switzerland) notes that “research has shown that teachers and students can get very creative and develop innovative and very useful activities for learning, inspired from constructivism and socio-constructivism like :
- Information sources (simple websites easily created)
- Student assignement hand-in (with the advantage of peer ratings)
- collaborative web-writing (to co-construct collective knowledge)
- problem solving
- project spaces
- anchored collaboration (anchored newsgroup-like discussions for reviews)
- focused discussions (forum-like discussions)
- case libraries (projects "Hall of Fame")
- cross class/courses projects (interdisciplinary projects)
- community building among students (common interests, adventure games…)
- learning to collaborate (to change the individualism culture of traditional instruction).”
According to Brian LAMB, pedagogical challenges in using Wikis are the following :
- “Tracking work created in wiki spaces can become a logistical nightmare, and course management can spin out of control quickly if pages are allowed to spawn without some set of protocols to regulate or index them. (…). Seemingly minor contributions to a collaborative document may have major effects, effects that may be near impossible to assess fairly or even to detect.”
- “As with the security issue, most of the pedagogic dilemmas presented by wikis can be addressed by "traditional" management approaches. (…) Instructors may choose to establish categories, topics, and other prompts to direct student participation into more orderly channels”.
- “Indeed, an instructor could structure and regulate interaction to such an extent that the wiki is effectively transformed into a stripped-down course management system. (…) This process involves not just adjusting the technical configuration and delivery; it involves challenging the social norms and practices of the course as well.”
- “This particular challenge bears resemblance to the one posed by constructivist teaching philosophy. To truly empower students within collaborative or co-constructed activities requires the teacher to relinquish some degree of control over those activities. The instructor’s role shifts to that of establishing contexts or setting up problems to engage students. In a wiki, the instructor may set the stage or initiate interactions, but the medium works most effectively when students can assert meaningful autonomy over the process.”
Complementary links to consult :
- “Wikis Described in Plain English” : another good definition and frequently asked questions about wikis, with a very simple video about it.
- Wikispaces : easy-to-use Wikis for non-expert people.
- « Tourbus » : offers guided tours of wiki sites all over the world.
- "Westwood" : a well-known example of pedagogical use of a Wiki in classrooms.
Complementary texts to read :
- “Teaching and learning online with wikis”, 2004, Naomi AUGAR, Ruth RAITMAN and Wanlei ZHOU (School of Information Technology, Deakin University, ASCILITE 2004 Proceedings) : this paper illustrates how e-learning practitioners can use wiki technology to enhance social interaction amongst students online, for the dissemination of information to the student body, for building information repositories or for the collaborative production of documents.
- “Uses and Potentials of Wikis in the Classroom”, 2006, S. PIXY FERRIS, Hilary WILDER (Innovate, 5, vol. 2, Fischler School of Education and Human Services, Nova Southeastern University - free online login is required to see the complete article -) : this paper considers the uses of wikis in classroom from the perspective of praxis. It places the uses and potentials of wikis along a continuum on which the traditional print-based educational paradigm anchors one end and the secondary-oral paradigm the other.
Unidade 2
a)
Reference : Texte et ordinateur. L'écriture réinventée ?, Jacques ANIS, 1998, collection "Méthodes en sciences humaines", De Boeck & Larcier s.a.
Jacques Anis considers that the relationship between text and computer must refer to a theoretical framework going from language sciences (linguistic, semiology, semiotics) to psychology, computer science and artificial intelligence. He considers that the text processing by a computer allows a “meta-writing” = dematerialization of the text (which becomes volatile object, created and modified by the word processing), meta-scriptural and reversible operations, offering various tools of textual organization, control, remote setting and objectivation of the text. Electronic text offers a diversity of views, plasticity and mobility (to visualize together or separately such or such element of the text, at various levels of granularity), memorization of the reading paths = appropriation and consultation’ strategies.
Data processing widens considerably the field of writing, by integrating multimedia components (texts, images, sounds…). The writing becomes inclusive by integrating these components. The text becomes mobile, increased by the multiplicity of its states, supports, views and options. The writing is removed from its sacred character by the text modifiable at will. The split-up between author and reader is erased with the hypertextual devices.
-------------------------
Reference : "L'ordinateur et la critique littéraire", Paul DELANY, 1994, Littérature, n°96, Larousse
Paul Delany reconsiders in this text contemporary literary criticism where the structuralism of the Sixties and Seventies declines to be replaced by work in network, pack of relations without hierarchy nor center (see Roland BARTHES: “work is a proposal”) = advent of the textual information data processing. The hypertext is a part of it = intertextuality, fragmentation and off-centring as in authors’work like DERRIDA, TODOROV, BARTHES or FOUCAULT. The literary analysis then will gradually adopt structures and vocabulary of the hypertext. A new kind of writing in hypertext or hypermedia appears, with hypertextual fiction and blocks of autonomous narrative units, giving an infinity of paths through the structure of the blocks and links built by the author = “narration at zero degree”.
The value of the hypertext is not in the “explosion” of the narration but in the new combinations of narrative and space structures. Time is then perceived like a geometrical space. Hypertext makes it possible to build an impenetrable very big and unified (via the network) text, collection of often fragmentary texts, separated from their authors and arriving in a jumble, as in oral conversation (= “electronic orality”).
------------------------
Reference :: "L'écriture hypertextuelle : pratique et théorie. A partir d'une recherche sur Rigodon", Roger LAUFER, 1994, Littérature, n°96, Larousse
According to Roger LAUFER, hypertext presents an open design of the communication object, authorizing mixture of media, discontinuous reading, modifying the access times, facilitating the updates. It allows plurality of points of view, association by references, invitation to complementary readings. It means also the pleasure of being surprised in the text construction through a hidden device. This fuzzy logic allows balancing of points of view and arguments.
----------------------------
Reference : "Gérer la complexité" et « Dispositifs », Jean-Pierre BALPE, 1997, université Paris 8.
According to Jean-Pierre BALPE, it is necessary to consider a collection of knowledge as a whole in the hypertext (or hypermedia) and to take into account its complexity by not imposing a hierarchy. It is thus necessary to consider this just like a system (set of interrelated elements), to regard the components’ definition as related to the observer and its point of view. According to him, taking into account the observer is absent from many multimedia devices, with predefined and not-evolutive reading. Hypertext requires to integrate some slack, some blur, some evolution one, some relativity = “intelligent adaptivity”, depending on the points of view given by the readers’ path. An “ergonomic scenarisation” offers thus various levels of self-adaptation according to the reader’s profile, necessary compromise between minimal structuring of knowledge and freedoms imposed by the reader’s needs.
Relationships between data processing and literature evolved from a passive reading tool (data-processing analyzis) to an active writing tool (data-processing literature). The data-processing literature is an evolutionary writing, it is a chaotic device : pages, chapters and sequences are always with single reading, in real-time generated, without end, built on an unlimited series of irreversible local divergences = dynamic of chaos, open production.
Hypertext of fiction
References : "L'hypertexte de fiction : naissance d'un nouveau genre ?", Jean CLEMENT, 1994 communication au colloque de l'ALLC, Sorbonne, Paris,"Afternoon, a Story. Du narratif au poétique dans l'œuvre hypertextuelle", Jean CLEMENT, 1994, actes du colloque "Nord Poésie et Ordinateur", Mots-Voir et Gérico, Circav éd., "Fiction interactive et modernité", Jean CLEMENT, 1994, Littérature, n°96, Larousse
Jean CLEMENT wrote a lot about fiction’s hypertext, which is based on fragmented narrative units, neither completely structured, nor completely unorganized. It is a collection of semi-organized fragments which invites to the walk and can be left at any time. Absence of intrigue is due to a partial and often illogical reading. We thus slip from a temporal to a space dimension, from narrative to poetic one. Hypertext inserts narrative sequences in the multidimensional space of an open structure = diverse and tabular reading. Text thus only exists as created by a particular path (from one single reader), or only in a virtual mode, being defined as the sum of its potential readings.
Hypertext is going thus from figurative to configurative dimension, discharging from its narrative function, from reading to writing (= “scriptorial interactivity”), from readable text to “scriptible” one.
Comments
Hypertext of fiction is one of the most known forms of literary hypertexts, with a specific hypertextual writing, where the text and its reading are not completely structured and defined in advance. Hypertext can sometimes be created during the time of interaction (= generative hypertexts, as described by Jean-Pierre BALPE).
Complementary links to consult :
- Storyspace = famous hypertext writing environment that is especially well suited to large, complex, and challenging hypertexts.
- Eastgate = famous on line editor of hypertexts (fiction, non fiction), many ressources about hypertextual writing
- Charabia.net = examples of funny and small generative hypertexts (in french) : click on "entrez", then select one generator in the list (Java must be installed in your browser/PC), then click on "cliquez pour générer". A totally new text will be created in real-time by the generator (at each click). You will find an explanation of the tool just below the generated text.
- The Electronic Labyrinth = a study of the implications of hypertext for creative writers looking to move beyond traditional notions of linearity.
Complementary texts to read :- "The Shaping of Hypertextual Narrative", Sergio Cicconi, 2000, The Integrated Media Machine: A Theoretical Framework, M. Yla-Kotola, J. Suoranta, S. Inkinen & J. Rinne, éd., Helsinki: University of Lapland. pp. 101-120 = interesting text to give a more detailed typology of narrative hypertexts.
b)
References :
"Comprendre le cinéma et les images", 2007, René GARDIES, dir., Hors collection, Armand Colin"Sous les vagues, la plage", Jean-Louis WEISSBERG, 1995, in "Ecrit, image, oral et nouvelles technologies", actes du séminaire 1994-1995, Publications de l'Université Paris 7"Le cadre comme entité relative", MORELLI Pierre, 1999Champs Visuels n°12-13 « Penser, cadrer, le projet du cadre », L’Harmattan
Nota bene : We refer here in quotation marks to the collective book (coordinated by Rene GARDIES) to which I took part as author of the chapter about interactive images.
An logician identity
In the chapter devoted to interactive images, I could insist on their numerical dimension, “the most important of the characteristics of interactive image (…) : the image is translated in a data-processing language which enables it to be created and/or modified via application softwares. This “logician identity” introduces a new dimension into the possible practices of image processing : the digital image is “written” in a data-processing language made by figures (succession of 0 and 1), it can be “calculated” by a program before being posted (the most known example is the digital images in movies, which calculation can take several days), it can also become “calculating”, i.e. ready to evolve/move/change according to the request of a user”.
We can find various examples of these interactive properties of digital image : scientific digital images (directly easy to handle on screen), multimedia CD-ROM (about museums by instance, with possibilities of zooms and navigation in the image), websites (in particular in the field of numerical art, where multimedia artists allow the user “to handle/interact” with their work). Certain authors as Jean-Louis WEISSBERG speak about “meta-image” to define the interactive image. “That means that image changes from “visible” to “readable” state : the image is written in a data-processing language, it thus becomes interpretable, flexible, calculable. The user does not perceive only the image but must control the interactivity of it (…): he must learn how “to read” the image more than “to look at it” if he wants to exploit all its potentialities”.
An incomplete image
“The first consequence of the logician state of interactive image is its incomplete dimension : the spectator will see only part of the image, one of the possible forms of this image but seldom its totality. Interactive image is thus basically “incomplete” as Jean-Louis WEISSBERG (1995) underlines it : it shows only one state at one moment of its display on screen. According to the requests of the user, the image will be able to evolve/move and change, for example, of form, size or color”.
Multimedia CD-ROM and websites frequently use this ability of digital images to change and to display only part of its contents : “rollover” action with the mouse (entering or leaving a zone on screen) which reveals or makes disappear an object or a text at screen, offering several reading levels according to the user’s needs (overflight of contents or in depth reading).
A latent image
“The second consequence of this logician state is the importance of interaction between image and user : if user does not interact, image remains generally fixed. It “awaits” an action from him to change maybe (if needed be). Jean-Louis WEISSBERG (1995) speaks about “latency” : an interactive image is brought up to date according to the user’s requests. This latency gives a particular status to the interactive image, which leads certain authors to establish comparisons with the “image-time” of Gilles DELEUZE (1985), when the cinematographic image becomes readable, thinking, no more being “image-action” (“sensori-motor” one) and leading the spectator to question itself on his position and on the images’meaning. In another way, interactive image invites also the user to think, to decide on its path in the multimedia application, where and how to click to obtain such or such result”.
By instance, some websites like GabonArt (about artistic Gabon of yesterday and today) propose virtual visits of real places through interactive images : the user browses in a virtual museum in digital images (simulating a visit). A virtual presenter goes with him during his visit and comments the different rooms and objects. Without action from the user, the point of view remains fixed and the visit does not progress. “Even in the case of faintly interactive images (fixed and non-modifiable photographs or graphics for example), a multimedia application invites the user to click to continue his consultation. (…) The screen of computer invites to interaction”.
A fertile image
“The characteristic of interactive image is thus to be able to reappear perpetually depending on interaction between image and user. Pierre MORELLI (1999) speaks about “fertile” image, able to evolve according to external parameters from the image itself and that the author controls more or less according to his initial choices of programming (in the data-processing sense). In certain cases, we can find multimedia applications where conditions of the images’change are pre-established by the author (zooms on the image, extraction of fragments, modification of the formal parameters of size/position, moves in virtual spaces…). This is the case of the majority of multimedia applications on CD-ROM and Web. In other cases, the author releases more strongly the conditions of interaction, going even until giving up any control of the final result seen by the user: artistic and interactive images generated in real-time (…), virtual worlds showing objects having an “autonomous life”, close to the real life.”
The visual thought
References :
"De l’économie informationnelle à la pensée visuelle", Alain RENAUD, 1993, Réseaux, n°61, CNET"Le virtuel, vertus et vertiges", Philippe QUEAU, 1993, collection "Milieux", INA, éditions Champ Vallon
This concept of “visual thought”, proposed by Alain RENAUD, means that we can think the digital image like a new relation mode between discursive and visible order. Computer is a meta-machine allowing handling and digital processing of signs. The multimedia devices allow a new field of polymorphic (texts, images, sounds…) and sensitive experiments (body experiment). Digital image integrates an operational, dialectical (= interactivity) and metaphorical dimension (perceptible and flexible form). It is an image “in becoming”, like the model of mental image.
According to Philippe QUEAU, virtual image is an interactive, browsable and real-time displayable database, in three-dimensional digital images = feeling of immersion, no analogy. Digital image allows sensitive perception of the subjacent and understandable models (= internal mathematical models of calculation). At the same time, this image has thus physical and symbolic constraints (like traditional images), it is a representation of a model and a moment in the process of interaction with this model.
Complementary links to consult
- Digital artists : Michel Lavigne (http://www.pigpix.org/ = digital images easy to handle and to program), Philippe Bootz (« e-poetry » = generative work with images, words and music), www.incidents.net (list of many interactive works on line) = all are good examples of digital images, calculated and calculating, with which the spectator can sometimes interact.
- virtual visit of the museum of Gabon Art = splendid work of digitalization of the Gabonese cultural heritage in a virtual museum you can visit on line. Click on “Visiter le Musée Virtuel » link on the left (under the speaker).
Complementary texts to read
- "Présences à distance. Déplacements virtuels et réseaux numériques : pourquoi nous ne croyons plus la télévision", Jean-Louis WEISSBERG, 1999, L'Harmattan = see more particularly chapters 5 and 6 about interactivity and « image actée » (= image in interaction with the user).
- « La pensée virtuelle », Philippe QUEAU, 1993, Réseaux, n°61, CNET : = interesting text on the characteristics of virtual images. Philippe QUEAU is the founder of IMAGINA festival in Monte-Carlo about digital works (especially in 3D).
c)
References :
"Les enjeux de la numérisation des objets temporels", Bernard STIEGLER, in "Cinéma et dernières technologies","Ecrire pour l'interactivité", Daniel THIERRY, 1989, Réseaux, n° 33, CNET
Bernard STIEGLER describes digitalization of videos as a process which makes it possible to delinearize the accesses, the audiovisual program becoming a document which can be browsed as a book with tools like table of contents, index (see the current case of the DVD for example, with many menus and options to select only parts of the film) but also search engines. Audio-visual flow (like in TV channel) is thus delinearized. The digital videos can be declined on several formats (duration, film editing…) and supports (cinema, TV, mobile phone, Internet…). We can thus access to clickable audiovisual contents or browse among them.
Daniel THIERRY worked on writing of interactive films, equivalent to the interactive literary fiction which has been studied by Jean CLEMENT in France. According to him, three structures are possible in interactive videos:
- horizontal one = strictly random and not hierarchical structure, simple catalog readable like a book with selection in a menu;
- arborescent one = hierarchical basis based on a scenario, offering various choices at certain times of the history
- matric one = conditioned by a systematic analysis of the navigational context (history of navigation, previous paths…).
According to these cases, author can thus cut out the audio-visual document in more or less modular modules, with fixed or variable entry and exit (connectable with only one or several other modules). This kind of interactive writing is less adapted to fiction (because it induces a poverty in the scenario) but is more interesting for documentary, informative or ludic films. The author must manage the dialog between the audio-visual contents and the spectator which will interact with them.
Complementary links to consult :
- www.anonymes.net = 3 examples of interactive videos. You must understand how to interact with parts of the film...
- www.nicolasclauss.com/ = website of the multimedia artist Nicolas CLAUSS, who proposes some online and interactive creations with video and animations.
d)
References :
"Transposition de l'encyclopédie de l'imprimé au multimédia. Application à la cible jeunesse", Marianne DUMET, 1998, thèse de Doctorat en Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication, Département Hypermédia, Université Paris 8"NTIC et nouvelles formes d'écriture", Franck GHITALLA, 1999, Communication et langages, n° 119, éditions RETZ"Métaphore et multimédia", Gérard POULAIN, 1996, La Documentation Française
Definitions
According to Franck GHITALLA, new technologies of information and communication brought new practices of writing based on semiotic heterogeneity (texts, images, sounds, videos), space-time organization of a writing device, multiple paths, an intrinsically variable text. The act of reading is carried out in a complex environment, in true handling spaces making reading a technically dynamic process. The fundamental characteristics of multimedia writing are thus:
- semiotic heterogeneity = various sensory formats exploited, immediate modes of representation, symbolic and abstracted systems
- a multiple topography = hypertext links, multiple windows on screen
- an ideographic dimension = direct simulation of the conceptual elements (for instance : charts, diagrams…)
- a dynamic configuration = exchanges of signs, scenarisation, handling potentialities of modification or recombining of consulted spaces.
According to Marianne DUMET, multimedia writing is based on a syntax using visual page layout, movement, action, setting in scene of knowledge and a new form given to the text. The visual page layout uses visual tables (synthetic views : maps, synopses…), images’ scenarios (succession of steps, varied points of view …), a dynamic visual composition (interactive visual representations, dynamic layout of images…).
Syntax by movement uses several figures :
- animation of visual representations = “image-relations” (to show interactions between knowledge : plays of appearance/disappearance of elements on screen…), “image-time” (to present deformations, transformations, displacements of elements…), “image-action” (to show an operation)
- animation of text = to make it more expressive, to guide the screen reading, to express importance of something, to call with the reading…
- animation of signs = visual assistance to the understanding (transformation…).
Syntax by action is based on concept of interactive model, which approaches alive and easy to handle models, making it possible for the user to change/move elements on screen and to see immediately consequences of it (displacement of objects, permutation of signs…). The multimedia writing thus offers an active pedagogy making act directly on knowledge to discover its components and its functioning. It also offers multiple points of view by the action : juxtaposed (in the same screen) and superposed ones (on several frameworks or windows open in the screen), answering themselves or appearing in various contexts :
- points of view related to perception = zooms (free or programmed), run of images, images to be discovered by graphic treatments (routings, appearances by layers, rollovers…), point of view’s modification on objects (QuickTime VR or VRML sequences …).
- points of view attached to reference frameworks = to give various points of view on the same topic.
Multimedia also makes it possible to carry out or make experiments : construction, deconstruction of objects or abstract representations, various measurements, experiments to be made…
Computer' screen thus opens on a virtual space where each object can give place to an event, giving a living aspect to the scene and creating a dynamics of reading.
Lastly, the text endorses a new role, it can be accompanied by a voice which comes to support the written text, to comment images, to tell stories or to cite someting.
Roles of the media
According to Gérard POULAIN, media can play various roles in an online (website) or offline (CD-ROM) multimedia application :
- text = to provide great quantities of information, to guide the users, to write reports
- sound = to add a presence and a context to information, to draw user’s attention
- graphics = to show statistics, to try out ideas, to represent virtual objects, to indicate relations in space
- still images = to illustrate detailed informations, to represent pictorial information, to show photographs
- cartoons = to show evolutions of objectives, to create imaginary characters, to express imaginary actions
- animated images (videos) = to illustrate pictorial or socio-cultural information, to show real actions.
Complementary links to consult :
- examples of Quicktime VR sequences : online virtual visit of a boat (= click on diagram zones on the left in order to open QTVR sequences, zoom in and out inside the sequences with the menu bar at the bottom of the sequence, turn on the left- or right-hand side while clicking the image).
- example of a famous Web site exploiting the multimedia writing very well (syntax by movement and action, dynamic presentation, new form given to the text…) : Leo Burnett (= navigation and activation of parts and contents of the site are done by various movings of your mouse cursor in the screen and by clicking on titles, the screens are true settings in scene of contents, according to user’s actions). I recommend you to take time to browse the whole parts of this website !
a)
Reference : Texte et ordinateur. L'écriture réinventée ?, Jacques ANIS, 1998, collection "Méthodes en sciences humaines", De Boeck & Larcier s.a.
Jacques Anis considers that the relationship between text and computer must refer to a theoretical framework going from language sciences (linguistic, semiology, semiotics) to psychology, computer science and artificial intelligence. He considers that the text processing by a computer allows a “meta-writing” = dematerialization of the text (which becomes volatile object, created and modified by the word processing), meta-scriptural and reversible operations, offering various tools of textual organization, control, remote setting and objectivation of the text. Electronic text offers a diversity of views, plasticity and mobility (to visualize together or separately such or such element of the text, at various levels of granularity), memorization of the reading paths = appropriation and consultation’ strategies.
Data processing widens considerably the field of writing, by integrating multimedia components (texts, images, sounds…). The writing becomes inclusive by integrating these components. The text becomes mobile, increased by the multiplicity of its states, supports, views and options. The writing is removed from its sacred character by the text modifiable at will. The split-up between author and reader is erased with the hypertextual devices.
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Reference : "L'ordinateur et la critique littéraire", Paul DELANY, 1994, Littérature, n°96, Larousse
Paul Delany reconsiders in this text contemporary literary criticism where the structuralism of the Sixties and Seventies declines to be replaced by work in network, pack of relations without hierarchy nor center (see Roland BARTHES: “work is a proposal”) = advent of the textual information data processing. The hypertext is a part of it = intertextuality, fragmentation and off-centring as in authors’work like DERRIDA, TODOROV, BARTHES or FOUCAULT. The literary analysis then will gradually adopt structures and vocabulary of the hypertext. A new kind of writing in hypertext or hypermedia appears, with hypertextual fiction and blocks of autonomous narrative units, giving an infinity of paths through the structure of the blocks and links built by the author = “narration at zero degree”.
The value of the hypertext is not in the “explosion” of the narration but in the new combinations of narrative and space structures. Time is then perceived like a geometrical space. Hypertext makes it possible to build an impenetrable very big and unified (via the network) text, collection of often fragmentary texts, separated from their authors and arriving in a jumble, as in oral conversation (= “electronic orality”).
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Reference :: "L'écriture hypertextuelle : pratique et théorie. A partir d'une recherche sur Rigodon", Roger LAUFER, 1994, Littérature, n°96, Larousse
According to Roger LAUFER, hypertext presents an open design of the communication object, authorizing mixture of media, discontinuous reading, modifying the access times, facilitating the updates. It allows plurality of points of view, association by references, invitation to complementary readings. It means also the pleasure of being surprised in the text construction through a hidden device. This fuzzy logic allows balancing of points of view and arguments.
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Reference : "Gérer la complexité" et « Dispositifs », Jean-Pierre BALPE, 1997, université Paris 8.
According to Jean-Pierre BALPE, it is necessary to consider a collection of knowledge as a whole in the hypertext (or hypermedia) and to take into account its complexity by not imposing a hierarchy. It is thus necessary to consider this just like a system (set of interrelated elements), to regard the components’ definition as related to the observer and its point of view. According to him, taking into account the observer is absent from many multimedia devices, with predefined and not-evolutive reading. Hypertext requires to integrate some slack, some blur, some evolution one, some relativity = “intelligent adaptivity”, depending on the points of view given by the readers’ path. An “ergonomic scenarisation” offers thus various levels of self-adaptation according to the reader’s profile, necessary compromise between minimal structuring of knowledge and freedoms imposed by the reader’s needs.
Relationships between data processing and literature evolved from a passive reading tool (data-processing analyzis) to an active writing tool (data-processing literature). The data-processing literature is an evolutionary writing, it is a chaotic device : pages, chapters and sequences are always with single reading, in real-time generated, without end, built on an unlimited series of irreversible local divergences = dynamic of chaos, open production.
Hypertext of fiction
References : "L'hypertexte de fiction : naissance d'un nouveau genre ?", Jean CLEMENT, 1994 communication au colloque de l'ALLC, Sorbonne, Paris,"Afternoon, a Story. Du narratif au poétique dans l'œuvre hypertextuelle", Jean CLEMENT, 1994, actes du colloque "Nord Poésie et Ordinateur", Mots-Voir et Gérico, Circav éd., "Fiction interactive et modernité", Jean CLEMENT, 1994, Littérature, n°96, Larousse
Jean CLEMENT wrote a lot about fiction’s hypertext, which is based on fragmented narrative units, neither completely structured, nor completely unorganized. It is a collection of semi-organized fragments which invites to the walk and can be left at any time. Absence of intrigue is due to a partial and often illogical reading. We thus slip from a temporal to a space dimension, from narrative to poetic one. Hypertext inserts narrative sequences in the multidimensional space of an open structure = diverse and tabular reading. Text thus only exists as created by a particular path (from one single reader), or only in a virtual mode, being defined as the sum of its potential readings.
Hypertext is going thus from figurative to configurative dimension, discharging from its narrative function, from reading to writing (= “scriptorial interactivity”), from readable text to “scriptible” one.
Comments
Hypertext of fiction is one of the most known forms of literary hypertexts, with a specific hypertextual writing, where the text and its reading are not completely structured and defined in advance. Hypertext can sometimes be created during the time of interaction (= generative hypertexts, as described by Jean-Pierre BALPE).
Complementary links to consult :
- Storyspace = famous hypertext writing environment that is especially well suited to large, complex, and challenging hypertexts.
- Eastgate = famous on line editor of hypertexts (fiction, non fiction), many ressources about hypertextual writing
- Charabia.net = examples of funny and small generative hypertexts (in french) : click on "entrez", then select one generator in the list (Java must be installed in your browser/PC), then click on "cliquez pour générer". A totally new text will be created in real-time by the generator (at each click). You will find an explanation of the tool just below the generated text.
- The Electronic Labyrinth = a study of the implications of hypertext for creative writers looking to move beyond traditional notions of linearity.
Complementary texts to read :- "The Shaping of Hypertextual Narrative", Sergio Cicconi, 2000, The Integrated Media Machine: A Theoretical Framework, M. Yla-Kotola, J. Suoranta, S. Inkinen & J. Rinne, éd., Helsinki: University of Lapland. pp. 101-120 = interesting text to give a more detailed typology of narrative hypertexts.
b)
References :
"Comprendre le cinéma et les images", 2007, René GARDIES, dir., Hors collection, Armand Colin"Sous les vagues, la plage", Jean-Louis WEISSBERG, 1995, in "Ecrit, image, oral et nouvelles technologies", actes du séminaire 1994-1995, Publications de l'Université Paris 7"Le cadre comme entité relative", MORELLI Pierre, 1999Champs Visuels n°12-13 « Penser, cadrer, le projet du cadre », L’Harmattan
Nota bene : We refer here in quotation marks to the collective book (coordinated by Rene GARDIES) to which I took part as author of the chapter about interactive images.
An logician identity
In the chapter devoted to interactive images, I could insist on their numerical dimension, “the most important of the characteristics of interactive image (…) : the image is translated in a data-processing language which enables it to be created and/or modified via application softwares. This “logician identity” introduces a new dimension into the possible practices of image processing : the digital image is “written” in a data-processing language made by figures (succession of 0 and 1), it can be “calculated” by a program before being posted (the most known example is the digital images in movies, which calculation can take several days), it can also become “calculating”, i.e. ready to evolve/move/change according to the request of a user”.
We can find various examples of these interactive properties of digital image : scientific digital images (directly easy to handle on screen), multimedia CD-ROM (about museums by instance, with possibilities of zooms and navigation in the image), websites (in particular in the field of numerical art, where multimedia artists allow the user “to handle/interact” with their work). Certain authors as Jean-Louis WEISSBERG speak about “meta-image” to define the interactive image. “That means that image changes from “visible” to “readable” state : the image is written in a data-processing language, it thus becomes interpretable, flexible, calculable. The user does not perceive only the image but must control the interactivity of it (…): he must learn how “to read” the image more than “to look at it” if he wants to exploit all its potentialities”.
An incomplete image
“The first consequence of the logician state of interactive image is its incomplete dimension : the spectator will see only part of the image, one of the possible forms of this image but seldom its totality. Interactive image is thus basically “incomplete” as Jean-Louis WEISSBERG (1995) underlines it : it shows only one state at one moment of its display on screen. According to the requests of the user, the image will be able to evolve/move and change, for example, of form, size or color”.
Multimedia CD-ROM and websites frequently use this ability of digital images to change and to display only part of its contents : “rollover” action with the mouse (entering or leaving a zone on screen) which reveals or makes disappear an object or a text at screen, offering several reading levels according to the user’s needs (overflight of contents or in depth reading).
A latent image
“The second consequence of this logician state is the importance of interaction between image and user : if user does not interact, image remains generally fixed. It “awaits” an action from him to change maybe (if needed be). Jean-Louis WEISSBERG (1995) speaks about “latency” : an interactive image is brought up to date according to the user’s requests. This latency gives a particular status to the interactive image, which leads certain authors to establish comparisons with the “image-time” of Gilles DELEUZE (1985), when the cinematographic image becomes readable, thinking, no more being “image-action” (“sensori-motor” one) and leading the spectator to question itself on his position and on the images’meaning. In another way, interactive image invites also the user to think, to decide on its path in the multimedia application, where and how to click to obtain such or such result”.
By instance, some websites like GabonArt (about artistic Gabon of yesterday and today) propose virtual visits of real places through interactive images : the user browses in a virtual museum in digital images (simulating a visit). A virtual presenter goes with him during his visit and comments the different rooms and objects. Without action from the user, the point of view remains fixed and the visit does not progress. “Even in the case of faintly interactive images (fixed and non-modifiable photographs or graphics for example), a multimedia application invites the user to click to continue his consultation. (…) The screen of computer invites to interaction”.
A fertile image
“The characteristic of interactive image is thus to be able to reappear perpetually depending on interaction between image and user. Pierre MORELLI (1999) speaks about “fertile” image, able to evolve according to external parameters from the image itself and that the author controls more or less according to his initial choices of programming (in the data-processing sense). In certain cases, we can find multimedia applications where conditions of the images’change are pre-established by the author (zooms on the image, extraction of fragments, modification of the formal parameters of size/position, moves in virtual spaces…). This is the case of the majority of multimedia applications on CD-ROM and Web. In other cases, the author releases more strongly the conditions of interaction, going even until giving up any control of the final result seen by the user: artistic and interactive images generated in real-time (…), virtual worlds showing objects having an “autonomous life”, close to the real life.”
The visual thought
References :
"De l’économie informationnelle à la pensée visuelle", Alain RENAUD, 1993, Réseaux, n°61, CNET"Le virtuel, vertus et vertiges", Philippe QUEAU, 1993, collection "Milieux", INA, éditions Champ Vallon
This concept of “visual thought”, proposed by Alain RENAUD, means that we can think the digital image like a new relation mode between discursive and visible order. Computer is a meta-machine allowing handling and digital processing of signs. The multimedia devices allow a new field of polymorphic (texts, images, sounds…) and sensitive experiments (body experiment). Digital image integrates an operational, dialectical (= interactivity) and metaphorical dimension (perceptible and flexible form). It is an image “in becoming”, like the model of mental image.
According to Philippe QUEAU, virtual image is an interactive, browsable and real-time displayable database, in three-dimensional digital images = feeling of immersion, no analogy. Digital image allows sensitive perception of the subjacent and understandable models (= internal mathematical models of calculation). At the same time, this image has thus physical and symbolic constraints (like traditional images), it is a representation of a model and a moment in the process of interaction with this model.
Complementary links to consult
- Digital artists : Michel Lavigne (http://www.pigpix.org/ = digital images easy to handle and to program), Philippe Bootz (« e-poetry » = generative work with images, words and music), www.incidents.net (list of many interactive works on line) = all are good examples of digital images, calculated and calculating, with which the spectator can sometimes interact.
- virtual visit of the museum of Gabon Art = splendid work of digitalization of the Gabonese cultural heritage in a virtual museum you can visit on line. Click on “Visiter le Musée Virtuel » link on the left (under the speaker).
Complementary texts to read
- "Présences à distance. Déplacements virtuels et réseaux numériques : pourquoi nous ne croyons plus la télévision", Jean-Louis WEISSBERG, 1999, L'Harmattan = see more particularly chapters 5 and 6 about interactivity and « image actée » (= image in interaction with the user).
- « La pensée virtuelle », Philippe QUEAU, 1993, Réseaux, n°61, CNET : = interesting text on the characteristics of virtual images. Philippe QUEAU is the founder of IMAGINA festival in Monte-Carlo about digital works (especially in 3D).
c)
References :
"Les enjeux de la numérisation des objets temporels", Bernard STIEGLER, in "Cinéma et dernières technologies","Ecrire pour l'interactivité", Daniel THIERRY, 1989, Réseaux, n° 33, CNET
Bernard STIEGLER describes digitalization of videos as a process which makes it possible to delinearize the accesses, the audiovisual program becoming a document which can be browsed as a book with tools like table of contents, index (see the current case of the DVD for example, with many menus and options to select only parts of the film) but also search engines. Audio-visual flow (like in TV channel) is thus delinearized. The digital videos can be declined on several formats (duration, film editing…) and supports (cinema, TV, mobile phone, Internet…). We can thus access to clickable audiovisual contents or browse among them.
Daniel THIERRY worked on writing of interactive films, equivalent to the interactive literary fiction which has been studied by Jean CLEMENT in France. According to him, three structures are possible in interactive videos:
- horizontal one = strictly random and not hierarchical structure, simple catalog readable like a book with selection in a menu;
- arborescent one = hierarchical basis based on a scenario, offering various choices at certain times of the history
- matric one = conditioned by a systematic analysis of the navigational context (history of navigation, previous paths…).
According to these cases, author can thus cut out the audio-visual document in more or less modular modules, with fixed or variable entry and exit (connectable with only one or several other modules). This kind of interactive writing is less adapted to fiction (because it induces a poverty in the scenario) but is more interesting for documentary, informative or ludic films. The author must manage the dialog between the audio-visual contents and the spectator which will interact with them.
Complementary links to consult :
- www.anonymes.net = 3 examples of interactive videos. You must understand how to interact with parts of the film...
- www.nicolasclauss.com/ = website of the multimedia artist Nicolas CLAUSS, who proposes some online and interactive creations with video and animations.
d)
References :
"Transposition de l'encyclopédie de l'imprimé au multimédia. Application à la cible jeunesse", Marianne DUMET, 1998, thèse de Doctorat en Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication, Département Hypermédia, Université Paris 8"NTIC et nouvelles formes d'écriture", Franck GHITALLA, 1999, Communication et langages, n° 119, éditions RETZ"Métaphore et multimédia", Gérard POULAIN, 1996, La Documentation Française
Definitions
According to Franck GHITALLA, new technologies of information and communication brought new practices of writing based on semiotic heterogeneity (texts, images, sounds, videos), space-time organization of a writing device, multiple paths, an intrinsically variable text. The act of reading is carried out in a complex environment, in true handling spaces making reading a technically dynamic process. The fundamental characteristics of multimedia writing are thus:
- semiotic heterogeneity = various sensory formats exploited, immediate modes of representation, symbolic and abstracted systems
- a multiple topography = hypertext links, multiple windows on screen
- an ideographic dimension = direct simulation of the conceptual elements (for instance : charts, diagrams…)
- a dynamic configuration = exchanges of signs, scenarisation, handling potentialities of modification or recombining of consulted spaces.
According to Marianne DUMET, multimedia writing is based on a syntax using visual page layout, movement, action, setting in scene of knowledge and a new form given to the text. The visual page layout uses visual tables (synthetic views : maps, synopses…), images’ scenarios (succession of steps, varied points of view …), a dynamic visual composition (interactive visual representations, dynamic layout of images…).
Syntax by movement uses several figures :
- animation of visual representations = “image-relations” (to show interactions between knowledge : plays of appearance/disappearance of elements on screen…), “image-time” (to present deformations, transformations, displacements of elements…), “image-action” (to show an operation)
- animation of text = to make it more expressive, to guide the screen reading, to express importance of something, to call with the reading…
- animation of signs = visual assistance to the understanding (transformation…).
Syntax by action is based on concept of interactive model, which approaches alive and easy to handle models, making it possible for the user to change/move elements on screen and to see immediately consequences of it (displacement of objects, permutation of signs…). The multimedia writing thus offers an active pedagogy making act directly on knowledge to discover its components and its functioning. It also offers multiple points of view by the action : juxtaposed (in the same screen) and superposed ones (on several frameworks or windows open in the screen), answering themselves or appearing in various contexts :
- points of view related to perception = zooms (free or programmed), run of images, images to be discovered by graphic treatments (routings, appearances by layers, rollovers…), point of view’s modification on objects (QuickTime VR or VRML sequences …).
- points of view attached to reference frameworks = to give various points of view on the same topic.
Multimedia also makes it possible to carry out or make experiments : construction, deconstruction of objects or abstract representations, various measurements, experiments to be made…
Computer' screen thus opens on a virtual space where each object can give place to an event, giving a living aspect to the scene and creating a dynamics of reading.
Lastly, the text endorses a new role, it can be accompanied by a voice which comes to support the written text, to comment images, to tell stories or to cite someting.
Roles of the media
According to Gérard POULAIN, media can play various roles in an online (website) or offline (CD-ROM) multimedia application :
- text = to provide great quantities of information, to guide the users, to write reports
- sound = to add a presence and a context to information, to draw user’s attention
- graphics = to show statistics, to try out ideas, to represent virtual objects, to indicate relations in space
- still images = to illustrate detailed informations, to represent pictorial information, to show photographs
- cartoons = to show evolutions of objectives, to create imaginary characters, to express imaginary actions
- animated images (videos) = to illustrate pictorial or socio-cultural information, to show real actions.
Complementary links to consult :
- examples of Quicktime VR sequences : online virtual visit of a boat (= click on diagram zones on the left in order to open QTVR sequences, zoom in and out inside the sequences with the menu bar at the bottom of the sequence, turn on the left- or right-hand side while clicking the image).
- example of a famous Web site exploiting the multimedia writing very well (syntax by movement and action, dynamic presentation, new form given to the text…) : Leo Burnett (= navigation and activation of parts and contents of the site are done by various movings of your mouse cursor in the screen and by clicking on titles, the screens are true settings in scene of contents, according to user’s actions). I recommend you to take time to browse the whole parts of this website !
Unidade 1
a)
HypertextFirst definition (from T. Nelson in Literary Machines) :
Collection of written materials or images connected together in a so complex way which they could not be suitably presented or represented on paper.
Other definitions :
- database technology typically characterized by textual fragments of small size connected together by links managed by the computer.
- analogy with the semantic network, diagram of representation of knowledge employed in artificial intelligence, directed graph where concepts are “nodes” and their relations are “links”. The indexing is being done on the semantic contents of the concepts rather than on an arbitrary order (alphabetical for example).
Hypermedia :
Multimedia dimension of the hypertext = integration of still and animated images (videos, animations…), sounds and texts in hypertexts.
Typology of hyperlinks :
Several typologies exist. Among them :
- according to CONKLIN (Conklin, J., 1987, “Hypertext: An introduction and survey”. IEEE Computer, 20 (9)) : referential links (notes, quotations, annotations…= non-hierarchical links, connecting two parts of the hyperdocument) and organisational links (hierarchical links = presenting materials at various levels of detail, increasingly large, and connecting a link-“father” with his “sons”)
- according to VERCOUSTRE (Vercoustre, A.-M., INRIA, France) : explicit links (defined by the author in the hypertext), implicit links (dynamic ones : unexpectable), executables links (which are lauching scripts or programs)
- according to PARUNAK (Parunak, H.V.D., 1991, “Ordering the Information Graph”. in Hypertext/Hypermedia Handbook, Berk, E. & Devlin, J., eds., Intertext Publications/McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., Inc., New York) : associative links (from a word in the hypertext to the proposals, from proposal to other proposals, paraphrase, illustration), links of aggregation (connect a whole to its parts and vice-versa, like a metonymy), links of revision (connect a node to its previous or posterior versions).
Comments :
It’s important to understand that hypertexts are based on concepts of network (semantic network between nodes) and association (with links).
Complementary links to consult :
- "Definition of hypertext" (by J. Blustein, Faculty of Computer Science Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada) : more definitions and points of view about it (click on the links in the text : Ted Nelson's definition...)
- "Fourth generation hypermedia: some missing links for the World Wide Web" (by M. Bieber, Hypermedia Information Systems Research Laboratory, New Jersey Institute of Technology, University Heights, U.S.A) : more explaination about typology of links in hypermedia systems.
Complementary texts to read :
- "As we may think", Vannevar Bush, Athletic Monthly, 1945
b)
Vannevar Bush faces the problem of the sum of the experiments and human knowledge which increase at extraordinary intervals, making their manual exploitation impossible. Technical solutions appear - photo cells, advanced photography, thermal and cathodic tubes - to allow a transformation of the scientific recordings. For instance :
- combination of optical projection and photographic reduction on microfilms (ratio from 1 to 20),
- possibilities of reducing this ratio by 1 to 10000 between the original and the recording on microfilm (= compression associated with a possibility of consultation),
- possibility of recording the document oneself directly, without having to use various intermediaries.
Vannevar Bush thus puts ahead the importance of the selection, currently difficult because of the mechanisms of alphabetical or alphanumeric indexing. The human spirit works by association of ideas, with an intricate collection of trails carried by the cells of brain, the transitory statute of memory, the fast action, the details of the mental images. It is impossible to translate accurately but we can be inspired some :
- selection by association first (rather than by indexing)
- selection to be mechanized (without reaching the flexibility and speed of human spirit).
Vannevar Bush’ proposal of the “Memex” is an individual bookstore allowing to store personal files, supplement of memory of the user with office, screens, keyboard and levers to question, record and consult its documents. It offers the possibilities of :
- visualizing various positions of projection on documents
- adding notes and comments on documents
- linking two items together, thus building a track, naming it and indexing it
- marking the items by a code (a pointer will draw attention to them).
- going directly from one item to another and coming backward
He proposed a new profession of “trail b lazers” = to propose useful ways in broad common recordings of knowledge.
Comments:
The text of Vannevar Bush is considered as the first conceptualization of hypertext, without naming it. Bush insists on the importance of selection, annotation and combination of documents in a semantic network. His proposition of a new job called “trail blazers” can be linked to actual roles of search engines and portals on the web.
Complementary links to consult :
- Vannevar Bush's biography
- presentation of theoretical hypertext computer system Memex (Wikipédia)
c)
Source : “Hypertext and hypermedia”, book, Jacob Nielsen, 1989, Academic Press
History :
Here are important dates to retain in the history of the hypertexts:
- 1945 : “Memex” (Memory Extender) project of Vannevar Bush = knowledge management tool which prefigures the concept of hypertext
- 1965 : Ted Nelson invents and publishes the word “hypertext” for the first time. His objective was to create a document starting from a vast whole of varied ideas, not structured, non-sequential and multimedia. He conceives also the project “Xanadu” = large, worldwide and multiple hyperbase of multimedia datas, distributed and based on a worldwide network of computers (with franchise agreements), allowing consultation, publication and recovery of information. Each document can include some flexible links, omni-directional ones or pointing towards other informations, and some sensors (informations stressing a characteristic of the document).
- 1968: Douglas Engelbart creates the NLS, “super”- word processing software including a mailing tool
- 1986-87: the software “Guides” (on PC) and “Hypercard” (on Macintosh) democratize the creation of hypertexts for a large and non-expert audience.
Fields of applications
Ben Shneiderman (in 1989) has defines 3 main rules to characterize a hypertext system :
- a big quantity of informations organized in fragments
- the fragments are connected together by links
- the user needs only a part of the whole information.
We can identify 5 categories of hypertexts (according to D. Scavetta):
- literary hypertexts (examples: Augment, Xanadu, Intermedia) = adaptation of literary works in hypertexts, with annotations’ possibilities, prevalence of the links on the internal structure of the nodes
- structural hypertexts (examples: KMS, gIBIS, Notecards) = information management and assistance to the argumentation, with nodes more important than the links and reduced possibilities of annotation
- hypertexts of presentation (example: Hyperties) = technical documentation, with separation between “author” (creation) and “reader” (browsing) modules
- hypertexts of groupware (example: Augment) = software engineering, information management inside an organization, where links and nodes are important and annotations are free
- hypertexts of exploration (example: KMS, Intermedia) = research of ideas in the processes of writing, formulation and exploration of problems with space metaphors, to work with information elements like concrete entities.
The fields of application of hypertexts are thus numerous:
- data processing : on line documentation, assistance for users, software engineering
- business : handbooks, dictionaries and reference books (encyclopedias), audits, commercial demonstrations, catalogs of products, ads
- intellectual work : organization of ideas, support for brainstorming, journalism, research
- education : self-training, supports of course, languages’ training, traditional literature, culture, museums
- entertainment : tourist guides, bookstores, bibliographical research tools, interactive fiction.
Considered prospects
In 1989, J. Nielsen imagined the following prospects for the future of hypertexts :
- in the short term (3 to 5 years) : emergence of a mass market, integration of the hypertext in various data-processing equipments
- in the medium term (5 to 10 years) : widened publication of hypertexts and hypermedias, solution for the compatibility between hypertext systems, development of editors and distributors specialized in hypertexts
- in the long term (10 to 20 years) : emergence of very large hypertexts, spaces of information shared between universities and companies, arrival of specialists and advisers in hypertexts who make a selection of recommended/official nodes and links, recording of users’ votes, impacts of non-sequentiality on the society, in particular in the training.
Complementary links to consult :
- Xanalogical structure (Xanadu project) : very interesting article about the project + link to Ted Nelson's homepage (he's still alive !) at the top of the page
- hypertext of presentation "Hyperties" : description and screenshots
- presentation of "Hypercard" (Wikipédia)
d)
This part is a small (and not exhaustive) list of hypertext/hypermedia tools, to illustrate previous conceptual definitions of hypertext.
KMS
Reference : “KMS: a distributed hypermedia system for managing knowledge in organizations”, Robert Akscyn, Donald McCracken, Elise Yoder,1987, Proceeding of the ACM conference on Hypertext, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, pp.1-20, ACM Press
“KMS is a commercial hypermedia system developed by Knowledge Systems for networks of heterogeneous workstations. It is designed to support organization-wide collaboration for a broad range of applications, such as electronic publishing, software engineering, project management, computer-aided design and on-line documentation. KMS is a successor to the ZOG system developed at Carnegie Mellon University from 1972 to 1985. A KMS database consists of screen-sized WYSIWYG workspaces called frames that contain text, graphics and image items. Single items in frames can be linked to other frames. They may also be used to invoke programs. The database can be distributed across an indefinite number of file servers and be as large as available disk space permits. Independently developed KMS databases can be linked together. The KMS user interface uses an extreme form of direct manipulation. A single browser/editor is used to traverse the database and manipulate its contents. Over 85% of the user's interaction is direct—a single point-and-click designates both object and operation. Running on Sun and Apollo workstations, KMS accesses and displays frames in less than one second, on average.(…)” (abstract of the article published by ACM Press)
KMS is a famous example of hypertext system for knowledge management in companies, to improve individual and collective productivity and to limit efforts devoted to shared databases’ maintenance. Its interface does’nt distinguish navigation and edition of contents (nodes are directly editable at the screen, like a Wiki : you can move, copy-paste, re-organize them…). This paradigm of direct manipulation and time multiplexing (very fast display on screen) is associated with collaboration tools (simultaneous and multiple access to the same project, communication tools and direct annotations).
NoteCards
Reference : “Reflections on NoteCards: seven issues for the next generation of hypermedia systems”, Halasz, Frank G., 2001, ACM Journal of Computer Documentation, Vol. 25 , 3, pp.71-87, ACM Press.
“NoteCards, developed by a team at Xerox PARC, was designed to support the task of transforming a chaotic collection of unrelated thoughts into an integrated, orderly interpretation of ideas and their interconnections. (….)” (abstract of the article published by ACM Press).
NoteCards is another famous hypertext system for workstations, to help brainstorming and structuration of ideas through a network of electronic cards. It offers various possibilities of organization, storage, information retrieval according to different ways of display, manipulation, modification and navigation. The links are named by the user, anchored via an icon towards another card. A browser represents a diagram of the structure of cards’ network and repertories propose to gather cards together. It is a 2nd generation hypertext system (the 1st one corresponds to only hypertextual systems with simple interfaces, like NLS or ZOG) which supports multimedia and offers several overall views of the network, for an individual or collective use, with a more advanced interface.
The paper of Frank Halasz however mentions several weaknesses in NoteCards and proposes solutions for hypertext systems of 3rd generation :
- System little adapted to networks of big size, broad and heterogeneous. To use preferably for on-line interactive presentations with small scales. Solution: fish-eyes views, graph flyovers, “contents” (individual nodes) or “structure” (networks) oriented retrieval informations’ system ;
- Static and split up structural model, not being able to reconfigure itself with each change in the contained informations. Not-virtual system, not-dynamics, imposing a premature organization of datas at the beginning (cards, titles and fileboxes quickly become obsolete). Solution: segmentation, naming and filling “delayed” in various ways, virtual or dynamic structures based on a description of components and a mechanism of research allowing to generate new compositions of nodes and links, to which the user can add properties (“virtual” links).
- Storage and passive recovery system. Solution: system including processes, maintenance and various computational engines
- No versioning to maintain and handle a history of modifications in a network. Solution: to allow consulting simultaneously various configurations of the same network, to offer a personalized context for each user of the same network.
- Weak possibilities of groupware : to create annotations, to maintain various organizations of the same network, to transfer messages between users in an asynchronous way. Solution : simultaneous multi-user access to the same network, notification of a material change to all users, social interactions to manage.
- Limited extensibility and flexibility : currently too generic system, not managing a work on the significance of datas and links (semantic approach). Solution: to allow adapting, personalizing, parameterizing the system with a particular task via an application interface accessible to non-expert persons.
FreeMind
This software belongs to category of intellectual hypertext systems, like you can find easily on the web (for free in general). For example (according to its official website), it helps you in many uses :
- Keeping track of projects, including subtasks, state of subtasks and time recording
- Project workplace, including links to necessary files, executables, source of information and of course information
- Workplace for internet research using Google and other sources
- Keeping a collection of small or middle sized notes with links on some area which expands as needed. Such a collection of notes is sometimes called knowledge base.
- Essay writing and brainstorming, using colors to show which essays are open, completed, not yet started etc, using size of nodes to indicate size of essays. I don't have one map for one essay, I have one map for all essays. I move parts of some essays to other when it seems appropriate.
- Keeping a small database of something with structure that is either very dynamic or not known in advance. The main disadvantage of such approach when compared to traditional database applications are poor query possibilities, but I use it that way anyway - contacts, recipes, medical records etc. You learn about the structure from the additional data items you enter. For example, different medical records use different structure and you do not have to analyze all the possible structures before you enter the first medical record.
- Commented internet favorites or bookmarks, with colors and fonts having the meaning you want.
Ideas are organized like a map including many nodes and links to different ressources.
CD-ROM : Little Women (by Louisa May Alcott)
This CD-Rom, published by in 1995 by BookWorm, is a good example of literary hypertext, based on a novel (firstly published as a book). Hypertext version gives you different ways of reading and using text and multimedia materials : annotations, clickable words (linked to a glossary), vocal reading of the text, links to additional multimedia datas (pictures, sounds, animations), margin notes, index, research tool, interactive table of contents, highlighter, bookmarks.
Please look at my Powerpoint presentation including screenshots of this CD-ROM, as examples of annotation index (slide 1), highlighting text and bookmarking pages (slide 2), annotation and cross referencing tool (slide 3), discussion editor (slide 4) and dictionary (slide 5).
Complementary links to consult :
- presentation of the “Mind Maps” method, including a video (in YouTube) from Tony Busan (inventor of Mind Maps) and a list of mind mapping softwares.
- very interesting interactive presentation (like a map !) of FreeMind (in French) : click on the differents nodes to open new parts of the map and select icons (near titles of nodes) to open new documents.
Complementary texts to read :
- “Control Choices and Network Effects in Hypertext Systems” (E. James Whitehead, Jr., 1998) : compares 3 categories of hypertext systems (monolithic ones, open ones and WWW) from the perspective of control decisions embedded in their architectures. This text gives a good perspective on 3 generations of hypertext systems we have mentioned in our course.
e)
I’ve collected below different definitions (and typologies) of interactivity in multimedia applications, according to various researchers in France in the domain of Information and Communication Sciences.
Definition 1
According to Isabelle Rieusset-Lemarié
Reference : « Esthétique de l'interactivité: approche historique », 1995, in Ecrit, Image, Oral et Nouvelles technologies, MC Vettraino-Soulard, dir., Actes du Séminaire 1994-1995, Publications de l'Université Paris 7 - Denis Diderot
Interactivity is opposed structurally to the dimension of spectacle because it moves away the spectator from any position of actor (in the sense taken in the Greek tragedy). The tragedy induces the active participation of the citizens, a phenomenon of “desindividuation” (mythical relation with the universe, allowing to transcend the individuals and to found the social body). On the contrary, according to the author, interactive television is an imitation of interactivity because it is reign of the individual, generalized insulation. The esthetics of interactivity must transform in-depth the social link to make emerging a symbolic dimension able to generate a way of being in the world. For instance, the rites make it possible to create links of a true community.
Definition 2
According to Roger Odin
Reference : « Cinéma et interactivité », 1993, Cahiers de recherche du CIRCAV, n° 3, Université de. Lille 3, pp. 19-26
4 criteria are needed to define an interactive media :
- direct contact between speaker and receiver
- interruptibility (to be able to act on course of events)
- reversibility between speaker and receiver (role reversal)
- possibility of acting on contents of the communication.
Definition 3
According to Pierre Lévy
Reference : « Remarques sur les interfaces », 1989, Réseaux, n° 33
Interactivity is a mutual and simultaneous action from two participants who can pursue together the same purpose but not necessarily. 4 consequences:
- the interruptibility (model of the conversation)
- the interaction should not be blocked by a request impossible to satisfy
- the “limited horizon line” (impossibility of knowing if the initial goal will be achieved, not too much solidified communication and interaction’s horizon line)
- feeling of an infinite database (15 choices at least in front of the user).
Then, Levy takes 3 metaphors of animals (which he borrows from Heyer) to express three types of interactivity:
- the herbivore grazes (inactive)
- the bee gathers (very selective but without a priori on the objective, systematic overflight and zapping)
- predatory seeks a specific prey.
An “intelligent” device will thus integrate 2 dimensions :
- the interactivity one (conversation, play, exploration and gathering, with hypermedia)
- the selection one (to benefit from the quantity by selecting, structuring and organizing the interesting documents among the network).
We go from devices of reception (like TV) to interfaces of selection, recombining and interaction.
Definition 4
According to Geneviève Jacquinot
Reference : "L'interactivité ou le dernier des postulats fondamentaux et menteurs", 1998, in Cinéma et dernières technologies, Leblanc, Beau, dirs, INA/De Boeck
We have entered the era of electronic “intertextuality” = direct access with images and sounds stored in memory, contextualisation at will, mix of images and various real-time handlings, simulation of virtual worlds… The digital image does not represent any more reality but translates an algorithm (calculated, exact image, without out-field). The digital image founds new methods of how to explore the seeing/hearing/knowing and is based on an intermediate semiotic statute (between “index” and “symbol” in Pierce terminology), playing an important role in structuration of knowledge, comprehension, memory and imagination.
Do multimedia devices propose a fusion between the understandable and the sensitive ? According to the author, the interactive devices do not allow oneiric consumption (implying and identification-making as in cinema). They block the emotion because of the need for acting (to select icons and buttons). We slip thus from interactivity into interaction.
It is also necessary to distinguish 2 kinds of interactivity:
- mechanical, functional, transitive one (actions on keyboard and screen) = functional level of the interactive terms (human-computer interaction)
- mental, intentional, intransitive (communication between user and software through choices of contents, structure, navigation) = meaning level of interaction’ scenarios.
It is the second type which makes it possible to develop a sensory, emotional, intellectual activity. The specificity of the interactive training experiment (with multimedia) is “to try out by”, which replaces “to live again with” (like with the cinema, TV and photography) = more directly operational relation with the learning experience, articulation between learning “by doing” and learning “by observation and instruction” between the physical and the abstract knowledge.
Definition 5
According to Jean-Louis Weissberg
Reference : « La simulation de l'autre, approche de l'interactivité informatique », 1989, Réseaux, n° 33, CNET, Paris
2 kinds of interactivity are existing :
- conversational interactivity = linguistic communication where the machine can analyze messages and send an identifiable message back to the user (anthropomorphism projected on the machine who “includes/understands” the messages).
- “interactivity of order” = role simulation, selection of pictograms, direct intervention on the image to realize the interactivity (consisted mediation by the software to organize materials and to produce the simulation effect).
Interactive communication is the relationship between an user, a software and its author = “auto-communication”, since the user realizes a conversation with himself (and the software makes it possible to activate).
The contact between user and interactive contents has 4 characteristics:
- not complete (it’s impossible to know all the possible combinations in a hypermedia)
- mediatization (no direct access to contents)
- segmentation (segmented contents)
- latency (the “spect-actor” must act “to wake up” the interactive contents).
The user becomes thus his own programmer of information taken in the stock produced by the author.
Definition 6
According to Sylvie Leleu-Merviel, Jean-Marc Laubin and Alain Durand
Reference : “Vers une classification des procédés d’interactivité par niveaux corrélés aux données”, 1997, in Hypertextes et hypermédias: H2PTM'97, Balpe, Jean-Pierre; Lelu, Alain; Nanard, Marc; Saleh, Imad, éd., Paris, Hermès, pp. 367-382
We can classify the interactive supports according to 3 types of datas :
- fixed datas,
- evolutionary datas (multiples combinations are possible),
- generative datas (not created in advance)
and according to 6 levels of “scénation” (= organized structure with which the user is put in interaction):
- audio-vision (linear and continuous diffusion: no material or conversational interactivity, but a communication interactivity) = cinema, TV
- reading (interruptible but sequential linear diffusion) = video tape recorder, books.
- consultation (indexed structure, sequential reading by request) = directories
- navigation (sequence of paths designed in advance) = tree structure
- exploration (networks of links allowing to individualize the paths) = encyclopedia
- virtual visit (not sequential diffusion, all depends on the user’s actions) = virtual guided visits.
Several levels are combinable in the same multimedia application.
Definition 7
According to Philippe Quéau
Reference : “Alteraction”, 1989, Réseaux, vol. 7, n° 33, pp. 27-46
Interaction is a potential of non foreseeable states by their author. 3 types of interaction are possible:
- heteronomous interaction (fixed laws)
- autonomous interaction (simulation of artificial life)
- “alteraction” (altering interaction, where the model controling the interaction deteriorates itself successively during the time of interaction).
Comments
You will notice that many scientific points of view have been published on this concept of interactivity. The question is not so homogeneous as for hypertext and hypermedia, and debate is always open.
Complementary links to consult :
- Svanaes, D., 2000, Understanding Interactivity: Steps to a Phenomenology of Human-Computer Interaction, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. PhD (in public domain) : please see the chapter 2 (pp. 20-86) about additional definitions of interactivity in Human Computer Interface litterature (another scientific domain). This text is a little hard to read (it's a PhD), but it gives you other scientific points of view on the subject, not always specialized in multimedia products.
a)
HypertextFirst definition (from T. Nelson in Literary Machines) :
Collection of written materials or images connected together in a so complex way which they could not be suitably presented or represented on paper.
Other definitions :
- database technology typically characterized by textual fragments of small size connected together by links managed by the computer.
- analogy with the semantic network, diagram of representation of knowledge employed in artificial intelligence, directed graph where concepts are “nodes” and their relations are “links”. The indexing is being done on the semantic contents of the concepts rather than on an arbitrary order (alphabetical for example).
Hypermedia :
Multimedia dimension of the hypertext = integration of still and animated images (videos, animations…), sounds and texts in hypertexts.
Typology of hyperlinks :
Several typologies exist. Among them :
- according to CONKLIN (Conklin, J., 1987, “Hypertext: An introduction and survey”. IEEE Computer, 20 (9)) : referential links (notes, quotations, annotations…= non-hierarchical links, connecting two parts of the hyperdocument) and organisational links (hierarchical links = presenting materials at various levels of detail, increasingly large, and connecting a link-“father” with his “sons”)
- according to VERCOUSTRE (Vercoustre, A.-M., INRIA, France) : explicit links (defined by the author in the hypertext), implicit links (dynamic ones : unexpectable), executables links (which are lauching scripts or programs)
- according to PARUNAK (Parunak, H.V.D., 1991, “Ordering the Information Graph”. in Hypertext/Hypermedia Handbook, Berk, E. & Devlin, J., eds., Intertext Publications/McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., Inc., New York) : associative links (from a word in the hypertext to the proposals, from proposal to other proposals, paraphrase, illustration), links of aggregation (connect a whole to its parts and vice-versa, like a metonymy), links of revision (connect a node to its previous or posterior versions).
Comments :
It’s important to understand that hypertexts are based on concepts of network (semantic network between nodes) and association (with links).
Complementary links to consult :
- "Definition of hypertext" (by J. Blustein, Faculty of Computer Science Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada) : more definitions and points of view about it (click on the links in the text : Ted Nelson's definition...)
- "Fourth generation hypermedia: some missing links for the World Wide Web" (by M. Bieber, Hypermedia Information Systems Research Laboratory, New Jersey Institute of Technology, University Heights, U.S.A) : more explaination about typology of links in hypermedia systems.
Complementary texts to read :
- "As we may think", Vannevar Bush, Athletic Monthly, 1945
b)
Vannevar Bush faces the problem of the sum of the experiments and human knowledge which increase at extraordinary intervals, making their manual exploitation impossible. Technical solutions appear - photo cells, advanced photography, thermal and cathodic tubes - to allow a transformation of the scientific recordings. For instance :
- combination of optical projection and photographic reduction on microfilms (ratio from 1 to 20),
- possibilities of reducing this ratio by 1 to 10000 between the original and the recording on microfilm (= compression associated with a possibility of consultation),
- possibility of recording the document oneself directly, without having to use various intermediaries.
Vannevar Bush thus puts ahead the importance of the selection, currently difficult because of the mechanisms of alphabetical or alphanumeric indexing. The human spirit works by association of ideas, with an intricate collection of trails carried by the cells of brain, the transitory statute of memory, the fast action, the details of the mental images. It is impossible to translate accurately but we can be inspired some :
- selection by association first (rather than by indexing)
- selection to be mechanized (without reaching the flexibility and speed of human spirit).
Vannevar Bush’ proposal of the “Memex” is an individual bookstore allowing to store personal files, supplement of memory of the user with office, screens, keyboard and levers to question, record and consult its documents. It offers the possibilities of :
- visualizing various positions of projection on documents
- adding notes and comments on documents
- linking two items together, thus building a track, naming it and indexing it
- marking the items by a code (a pointer will draw attention to them).
- going directly from one item to another and coming backward
He proposed a new profession of “trail b lazers” = to propose useful ways in broad common recordings of knowledge.
Comments:
The text of Vannevar Bush is considered as the first conceptualization of hypertext, without naming it. Bush insists on the importance of selection, annotation and combination of documents in a semantic network. His proposition of a new job called “trail blazers” can be linked to actual roles of search engines and portals on the web.
Complementary links to consult :
- Vannevar Bush's biography
- presentation of theoretical hypertext computer system Memex (Wikipédia)
c)
Source : “Hypertext and hypermedia”, book, Jacob Nielsen, 1989, Academic Press
History :
Here are important dates to retain in the history of the hypertexts:
- 1945 : “Memex” (Memory Extender) project of Vannevar Bush = knowledge management tool which prefigures the concept of hypertext
- 1965 : Ted Nelson invents and publishes the word “hypertext” for the first time. His objective was to create a document starting from a vast whole of varied ideas, not structured, non-sequential and multimedia. He conceives also the project “Xanadu” = large, worldwide and multiple hyperbase of multimedia datas, distributed and based on a worldwide network of computers (with franchise agreements), allowing consultation, publication and recovery of information. Each document can include some flexible links, omni-directional ones or pointing towards other informations, and some sensors (informations stressing a characteristic of the document).
- 1968: Douglas Engelbart creates the NLS, “super”- word processing software including a mailing tool
- 1986-87: the software “Guides” (on PC) and “Hypercard” (on Macintosh) democratize the creation of hypertexts for a large and non-expert audience.
Fields of applications
Ben Shneiderman (in 1989) has defines 3 main rules to characterize a hypertext system :
- a big quantity of informations organized in fragments
- the fragments are connected together by links
- the user needs only a part of the whole information.
We can identify 5 categories of hypertexts (according to D. Scavetta):
- literary hypertexts (examples: Augment, Xanadu, Intermedia) = adaptation of literary works in hypertexts, with annotations’ possibilities, prevalence of the links on the internal structure of the nodes
- structural hypertexts (examples: KMS, gIBIS, Notecards) = information management and assistance to the argumentation, with nodes more important than the links and reduced possibilities of annotation
- hypertexts of presentation (example: Hyperties) = technical documentation, with separation between “author” (creation) and “reader” (browsing) modules
- hypertexts of groupware (example: Augment) = software engineering, information management inside an organization, where links and nodes are important and annotations are free
- hypertexts of exploration (example: KMS, Intermedia) = research of ideas in the processes of writing, formulation and exploration of problems with space metaphors, to work with information elements like concrete entities.
The fields of application of hypertexts are thus numerous:
- data processing : on line documentation, assistance for users, software engineering
- business : handbooks, dictionaries and reference books (encyclopedias), audits, commercial demonstrations, catalogs of products, ads
- intellectual work : organization of ideas, support for brainstorming, journalism, research
- education : self-training, supports of course, languages’ training, traditional literature, culture, museums
- entertainment : tourist guides, bookstores, bibliographical research tools, interactive fiction.
Considered prospects
In 1989, J. Nielsen imagined the following prospects for the future of hypertexts :
- in the short term (3 to 5 years) : emergence of a mass market, integration of the hypertext in various data-processing equipments
- in the medium term (5 to 10 years) : widened publication of hypertexts and hypermedias, solution for the compatibility between hypertext systems, development of editors and distributors specialized in hypertexts
- in the long term (10 to 20 years) : emergence of very large hypertexts, spaces of information shared between universities and companies, arrival of specialists and advisers in hypertexts who make a selection of recommended/official nodes and links, recording of users’ votes, impacts of non-sequentiality on the society, in particular in the training.
Complementary links to consult :
- Xanalogical structure (Xanadu project) : very interesting article about the project + link to Ted Nelson's homepage (he's still alive !) at the top of the page
- hypertext of presentation "Hyperties" : description and screenshots
- presentation of "Hypercard" (Wikipédia)
d)
This part is a small (and not exhaustive) list of hypertext/hypermedia tools, to illustrate previous conceptual definitions of hypertext.
KMS
Reference : “KMS: a distributed hypermedia system for managing knowledge in organizations”, Robert Akscyn, Donald McCracken, Elise Yoder,1987, Proceeding of the ACM conference on Hypertext, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, pp.1-20, ACM Press
“KMS is a commercial hypermedia system developed by Knowledge Systems for networks of heterogeneous workstations. It is designed to support organization-wide collaboration for a broad range of applications, such as electronic publishing, software engineering, project management, computer-aided design and on-line documentation. KMS is a successor to the ZOG system developed at Carnegie Mellon University from 1972 to 1985. A KMS database consists of screen-sized WYSIWYG workspaces called frames that contain text, graphics and image items. Single items in frames can be linked to other frames. They may also be used to invoke programs. The database can be distributed across an indefinite number of file servers and be as large as available disk space permits. Independently developed KMS databases can be linked together. The KMS user interface uses an extreme form of direct manipulation. A single browser/editor is used to traverse the database and manipulate its contents. Over 85% of the user's interaction is direct—a single point-and-click designates both object and operation. Running on Sun and Apollo workstations, KMS accesses and displays frames in less than one second, on average.(…)” (abstract of the article published by ACM Press)
KMS is a famous example of hypertext system for knowledge management in companies, to improve individual and collective productivity and to limit efforts devoted to shared databases’ maintenance. Its interface does’nt distinguish navigation and edition of contents (nodes are directly editable at the screen, like a Wiki : you can move, copy-paste, re-organize them…). This paradigm of direct manipulation and time multiplexing (very fast display on screen) is associated with collaboration tools (simultaneous and multiple access to the same project, communication tools and direct annotations).
NoteCards
Reference : “Reflections on NoteCards: seven issues for the next generation of hypermedia systems”, Halasz, Frank G., 2001, ACM Journal of Computer Documentation, Vol. 25 , 3, pp.71-87, ACM Press.
“NoteCards, developed by a team at Xerox PARC, was designed to support the task of transforming a chaotic collection of unrelated thoughts into an integrated, orderly interpretation of ideas and their interconnections. (….)” (abstract of the article published by ACM Press).
NoteCards is another famous hypertext system for workstations, to help brainstorming and structuration of ideas through a network of electronic cards. It offers various possibilities of organization, storage, information retrieval according to different ways of display, manipulation, modification and navigation. The links are named by the user, anchored via an icon towards another card. A browser represents a diagram of the structure of cards’ network and repertories propose to gather cards together. It is a 2nd generation hypertext system (the 1st one corresponds to only hypertextual systems with simple interfaces, like NLS or ZOG) which supports multimedia and offers several overall views of the network, for an individual or collective use, with a more advanced interface.
The paper of Frank Halasz however mentions several weaknesses in NoteCards and proposes solutions for hypertext systems of 3rd generation :
- System little adapted to networks of big size, broad and heterogeneous. To use preferably for on-line interactive presentations with small scales. Solution: fish-eyes views, graph flyovers, “contents” (individual nodes) or “structure” (networks) oriented retrieval informations’ system ;
- Static and split up structural model, not being able to reconfigure itself with each change in the contained informations. Not-virtual system, not-dynamics, imposing a premature organization of datas at the beginning (cards, titles and fileboxes quickly become obsolete). Solution: segmentation, naming and filling “delayed” in various ways, virtual or dynamic structures based on a description of components and a mechanism of research allowing to generate new compositions of nodes and links, to which the user can add properties (“virtual” links).
- Storage and passive recovery system. Solution: system including processes, maintenance and various computational engines
- No versioning to maintain and handle a history of modifications in a network. Solution: to allow consulting simultaneously various configurations of the same network, to offer a personalized context for each user of the same network.
- Weak possibilities of groupware : to create annotations, to maintain various organizations of the same network, to transfer messages between users in an asynchronous way. Solution : simultaneous multi-user access to the same network, notification of a material change to all users, social interactions to manage.
- Limited extensibility and flexibility : currently too generic system, not managing a work on the significance of datas and links (semantic approach). Solution: to allow adapting, personalizing, parameterizing the system with a particular task via an application interface accessible to non-expert persons.
FreeMind
This software belongs to category of intellectual hypertext systems, like you can find easily on the web (for free in general). For example (according to its official website), it helps you in many uses :
- Keeping track of projects, including subtasks, state of subtasks and time recording
- Project workplace, including links to necessary files, executables, source of information and of course information
- Workplace for internet research using Google and other sources
- Keeping a collection of small or middle sized notes with links on some area which expands as needed. Such a collection of notes is sometimes called knowledge base.
- Essay writing and brainstorming, using colors to show which essays are open, completed, not yet started etc, using size of nodes to indicate size of essays. I don't have one map for one essay, I have one map for all essays. I move parts of some essays to other when it seems appropriate.
- Keeping a small database of something with structure that is either very dynamic or not known in advance. The main disadvantage of such approach when compared to traditional database applications are poor query possibilities, but I use it that way anyway - contacts, recipes, medical records etc. You learn about the structure from the additional data items you enter. For example, different medical records use different structure and you do not have to analyze all the possible structures before you enter the first medical record.
- Commented internet favorites or bookmarks, with colors and fonts having the meaning you want.
Ideas are organized like a map including many nodes and links to different ressources.
CD-ROM : Little Women (by Louisa May Alcott)
This CD-Rom, published by in 1995 by BookWorm, is a good example of literary hypertext, based on a novel (firstly published as a book). Hypertext version gives you different ways of reading and using text and multimedia materials : annotations, clickable words (linked to a glossary), vocal reading of the text, links to additional multimedia datas (pictures, sounds, animations), margin notes, index, research tool, interactive table of contents, highlighter, bookmarks.
Please look at my Powerpoint presentation including screenshots of this CD-ROM, as examples of annotation index (slide 1), highlighting text and bookmarking pages (slide 2), annotation and cross referencing tool (slide 3), discussion editor (slide 4) and dictionary (slide 5).
Complementary links to consult :
- presentation of the “Mind Maps” method, including a video (in YouTube) from Tony Busan (inventor of Mind Maps) and a list of mind mapping softwares.
- very interesting interactive presentation (like a map !) of FreeMind (in French) : click on the differents nodes to open new parts of the map and select icons (near titles of nodes) to open new documents.
Complementary texts to read :
- “Control Choices and Network Effects in Hypertext Systems” (E. James Whitehead, Jr., 1998) : compares 3 categories of hypertext systems (monolithic ones, open ones and WWW) from the perspective of control decisions embedded in their architectures. This text gives a good perspective on 3 generations of hypertext systems we have mentioned in our course.
e)
I’ve collected below different definitions (and typologies) of interactivity in multimedia applications, according to various researchers in France in the domain of Information and Communication Sciences.
Definition 1
According to Isabelle Rieusset-Lemarié
Reference : « Esthétique de l'interactivité: approche historique », 1995, in Ecrit, Image, Oral et Nouvelles technologies, MC Vettraino-Soulard, dir., Actes du Séminaire 1994-1995, Publications de l'Université Paris 7 - Denis Diderot
Interactivity is opposed structurally to the dimension of spectacle because it moves away the spectator from any position of actor (in the sense taken in the Greek tragedy). The tragedy induces the active participation of the citizens, a phenomenon of “desindividuation” (mythical relation with the universe, allowing to transcend the individuals and to found the social body). On the contrary, according to the author, interactive television is an imitation of interactivity because it is reign of the individual, generalized insulation. The esthetics of interactivity must transform in-depth the social link to make emerging a symbolic dimension able to generate a way of being in the world. For instance, the rites make it possible to create links of a true community.
Definition 2
According to Roger Odin
Reference : « Cinéma et interactivité », 1993, Cahiers de recherche du CIRCAV, n° 3, Université de. Lille 3, pp. 19-26
4 criteria are needed to define an interactive media :
- direct contact between speaker and receiver
- interruptibility (to be able to act on course of events)
- reversibility between speaker and receiver (role reversal)
- possibility of acting on contents of the communication.
Definition 3
According to Pierre Lévy
Reference : « Remarques sur les interfaces », 1989, Réseaux, n° 33
Interactivity is a mutual and simultaneous action from two participants who can pursue together the same purpose but not necessarily. 4 consequences:
- the interruptibility (model of the conversation)
- the interaction should not be blocked by a request impossible to satisfy
- the “limited horizon line” (impossibility of knowing if the initial goal will be achieved, not too much solidified communication and interaction’s horizon line)
- feeling of an infinite database (15 choices at least in front of the user).
Then, Levy takes 3 metaphors of animals (which he borrows from Heyer) to express three types of interactivity:
- the herbivore grazes (inactive)
- the bee gathers (very selective but without a priori on the objective, systematic overflight and zapping)
- predatory seeks a specific prey.
An “intelligent” device will thus integrate 2 dimensions :
- the interactivity one (conversation, play, exploration and gathering, with hypermedia)
- the selection one (to benefit from the quantity by selecting, structuring and organizing the interesting documents among the network).
We go from devices of reception (like TV) to interfaces of selection, recombining and interaction.
Definition 4
According to Geneviève Jacquinot
Reference : "L'interactivité ou le dernier des postulats fondamentaux et menteurs", 1998, in Cinéma et dernières technologies, Leblanc, Beau, dirs, INA/De Boeck
We have entered the era of electronic “intertextuality” = direct access with images and sounds stored in memory, contextualisation at will, mix of images and various real-time handlings, simulation of virtual worlds… The digital image does not represent any more reality but translates an algorithm (calculated, exact image, without out-field). The digital image founds new methods of how to explore the seeing/hearing/knowing and is based on an intermediate semiotic statute (between “index” and “symbol” in Pierce terminology), playing an important role in structuration of knowledge, comprehension, memory and imagination.
Do multimedia devices propose a fusion between the understandable and the sensitive ? According to the author, the interactive devices do not allow oneiric consumption (implying and identification-making as in cinema). They block the emotion because of the need for acting (to select icons and buttons). We slip thus from interactivity into interaction.
It is also necessary to distinguish 2 kinds of interactivity:
- mechanical, functional, transitive one (actions on keyboard and screen) = functional level of the interactive terms (human-computer interaction)
- mental, intentional, intransitive (communication between user and software through choices of contents, structure, navigation) = meaning level of interaction’ scenarios.
It is the second type which makes it possible to develop a sensory, emotional, intellectual activity. The specificity of the interactive training experiment (with multimedia) is “to try out by”, which replaces “to live again with” (like with the cinema, TV and photography) = more directly operational relation with the learning experience, articulation between learning “by doing” and learning “by observation and instruction” between the physical and the abstract knowledge.
Definition 5
According to Jean-Louis Weissberg
Reference : « La simulation de l'autre, approche de l'interactivité informatique », 1989, Réseaux, n° 33, CNET, Paris
2 kinds of interactivity are existing :
- conversational interactivity = linguistic communication where the machine can analyze messages and send an identifiable message back to the user (anthropomorphism projected on the machine who “includes/understands” the messages).
- “interactivity of order” = role simulation, selection of pictograms, direct intervention on the image to realize the interactivity (consisted mediation by the software to organize materials and to produce the simulation effect).
Interactive communication is the relationship between an user, a software and its author = “auto-communication”, since the user realizes a conversation with himself (and the software makes it possible to activate).
The contact between user and interactive contents has 4 characteristics:
- not complete (it’s impossible to know all the possible combinations in a hypermedia)
- mediatization (no direct access to contents)
- segmentation (segmented contents)
- latency (the “spect-actor” must act “to wake up” the interactive contents).
The user becomes thus his own programmer of information taken in the stock produced by the author.
Definition 6
According to Sylvie Leleu-Merviel, Jean-Marc Laubin and Alain Durand
Reference : “Vers une classification des procédés d’interactivité par niveaux corrélés aux données”, 1997, in Hypertextes et hypermédias: H2PTM'97, Balpe, Jean-Pierre; Lelu, Alain; Nanard, Marc; Saleh, Imad, éd., Paris, Hermès, pp. 367-382
We can classify the interactive supports according to 3 types of datas :
- fixed datas,
- evolutionary datas (multiples combinations are possible),
- generative datas (not created in advance)
and according to 6 levels of “scénation” (= organized structure with which the user is put in interaction):
- audio-vision (linear and continuous diffusion: no material or conversational interactivity, but a communication interactivity) = cinema, TV
- reading (interruptible but sequential linear diffusion) = video tape recorder, books.
- consultation (indexed structure, sequential reading by request) = directories
- navigation (sequence of paths designed in advance) = tree structure
- exploration (networks of links allowing to individualize the paths) = encyclopedia
- virtual visit (not sequential diffusion, all depends on the user’s actions) = virtual guided visits.
Several levels are combinable in the same multimedia application.
Definition 7
According to Philippe Quéau
Reference : “Alteraction”, 1989, Réseaux, vol. 7, n° 33, pp. 27-46
Interaction is a potential of non foreseeable states by their author. 3 types of interaction are possible:
- heteronomous interaction (fixed laws)
- autonomous interaction (simulation of artificial life)
- “alteraction” (altering interaction, where the model controling the interaction deteriorates itself successively during the time of interaction).
Comments
You will notice that many scientific points of view have been published on this concept of interactivity. The question is not so homogeneous as for hypertext and hypermedia, and debate is always open.
Complementary links to consult :
- Svanaes, D., 2000, Understanding Interactivity: Steps to a Phenomenology of Human-Computer Interaction, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. PhD (in public domain) : please see the chapter 2 (pp. 20-86) about additional definitions of interactivity in Human Computer Interface litterature (another scientific domain). This text is a little hard to read (it's a PhD), but it gives you other scientific points of view on the subject, not always specialized in multimedia products.
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