Hypertext 2002
Advance Program : Panels

Over the past several decades, hypertext system architectures have evolved from the early monolithic systems to the middleware-oriented, component-based, and open systems of today. But these architectures continue to rely on traditional client-server based approaches. Recently, a peer-to-peer based approach to hypertext systems has been discussed as an alternative. This panel will try to identify, clarify, and discuss some of the issues and potential benefits involved in peer-to-peer hypertext. The panel will examine the issues from different perspectives: from the perspective of hypertext system developers, hypertext authors (writers), and hypertext readers.

Moderator: Uffe K. Wiil (Aalborg University, Denmark)
Panelists: Niels Olof Bouvin (Aarhus University, Denmark), David C. De Roure (University of Southampton, UK), Deena Larsen (Lakewood, Colorado, USA), Mark K. Thompson (University of Southampton, UK)

Although most theory and research in the hypertext community has been directed toward systems and implementations with fairly conventional patterns of authorship, hypertext as it has evolved on the Internet contains a number of stranger species: Web logs (or "blogs") that consist largely of citations or pointers to other Web content; reader-writeable text spaces sometimes called "Wikis"; and in spaces outside the Web, shared writing environments like MUDs and MOOs. This panel brings together several writer/designers who have experience in one or more of these areas. The panelists will consider how open-form and self-assembling texts fit and stretch the hypertext paradigm, and what contribution these writing practices might make to the future of writing on the Net.

Moderator: Stuart Moulthrop (University of Baltimore, MD, USA)
Panelists: Mark Bernstein (Eastgate Systems, MA, USA), Sean Carton (Carton-Donofrio Partners)

The term "Sculptural Hypertext", coined by Mark Bernstein in his Hypertext '01 paper "Card Shark and Thespis", refers to a style of writing hypertext where the document author starts with a massively connected structure, and the task of authoring links consists of cutting away those links that are not wanted, much as someone sculpting in stone in the traditional way starts with a block of stone and forms an image by cutting away the "excess" material. The opposing term, "Calligraphic Hypertext", refers to the more familiar method of finely authoring each link. This panel seeks to address questions pertaining to authorship and tools for the sculptural approach to hypertext. Among the questions we want to address are: How does one write a sculptural hypertext? How does this concept scale -- or is it only suited to small works? What differences are there for the _reader_ of a sculptural hypertext vs. a calligraphic hypertext? How does the "subtractive" concept work with other models of hypertext than the node-link model, e.g. spatial hypertext? What are the differences in requirements for tool designers of sculptural vs. calligraphic hypertext systems?

Moderator: Jim Rosenberg (Grindstone, PA, USA)
Panelists: Mark Bernstein (Eastgate Systems, MA, USA), Cathy Marshall (Microsoft, USA), Paul deBra (Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands), David Millard (University of Southampton, UK), Frank Shipman (Texas A&M University, USA)

It has been 15 years since the original presentation by Frank Halasz at Hypertext'87 on seven issues for the next generation of hypertext systems. These issues are:

Though Nelson gave us "hypermedia" practically in the same breath as "hypertext," initial literary explorations of hypermedia stuck fairly closely to verbal models. Over the last five years this bias has begun notably to decay. As poets, graphic, and narrative artists become more familiar with powerful end-user tools like Macromedia Flash, and as these tools evolve more sophisticated scripting support, the old line between multi-dimensional hypertext and more linear multimedia has considerably blurred. This process raises important questions both for artists and for hypertext theorists. What is the place of verbal forms in a context of dynamic images? How can the spatial agenda of hypertext navigation be reconciled with animation, simulation, and other primarily temporal techniques? What can creators of hypertext systems learn from aesthetic encounters between word and image?

Moderator: Stuart Moulthrop (University of Baltimore, MD, USA)
Panelists: Diana Slattery, Jim Rosenberg (PA, USA), Nick Montfort