Augmenting Intellectual Freedom of Movement through Richly Interactive Text and Citations
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Southampton
Department Name: Electronics and Computer Science
Abstract
Knowledge is fluid with a multiplicity of interconnections-whereas an argument, such as a PhD thesis-is rigid and linear, though supported by connections to the fluidly connected knowledge space. The research question is how can a richly hypertextual environment augment the author's ability to perform literature reviews, support cognitive internalising of the external work to achieve clarity and how can this be further communicated in a linear form, connected to, and given credibility from, the fluid knowledge space?
This project examines:
the requirement on students to document their understanding of a richly interconnected research literature
how students achieve this outcome using the current generation of knowledge tools; and any difficulties and weaknesses that students / examiners experience in forming and communicating this understanding
what hypertextual functionality could better support the presentation and interaction of interconnected knowledge, connected to a linear argument and how different views can service both while easily toggling between them
The premise of the work is that in the space between the tyranny of the link (Halasz, 1991) and the tyranny of the button (Hall, 1994) before the anarchy of the node (Marshall & Rogers, 1992) lies an opportunity for rich mental freedom to augment human thought (Engelbart, 1962).
The approach the research has led me to is with what I have named 'visual-meta' where much of the richness of the author's manuscript is encoded in the exported PDF document as an expanded BibTex reference at the end of the PDF. This visual-meta contains all the information the next reader would need to cite the document, as well as descriptions of the the document structure in order for the reader software to be able to present an interactive outline, support for actively re-building any dynamic view, descriptions of how to read/parse diagrams and in-document access to citations and more.
I have built a macOS word processor for authoring with visual-meta automatically appended, called 'Author', and a PDF reader called 'Reader' which interprets it. This is in order to test the practicality and usefulness of the system, which is the next stage of the research.
This project examines:
the requirement on students to document their understanding of a richly interconnected research literature
how students achieve this outcome using the current generation of knowledge tools; and any difficulties and weaknesses that students / examiners experience in forming and communicating this understanding
what hypertextual functionality could better support the presentation and interaction of interconnected knowledge, connected to a linear argument and how different views can service both while easily toggling between them
The premise of the work is that in the space between the tyranny of the link (Halasz, 1991) and the tyranny of the button (Hall, 1994) before the anarchy of the node (Marshall & Rogers, 1992) lies an opportunity for rich mental freedom to augment human thought (Engelbart, 1962).
The approach the research has led me to is with what I have named 'visual-meta' where much of the richness of the author's manuscript is encoded in the exported PDF document as an expanded BibTex reference at the end of the PDF. This visual-meta contains all the information the next reader would need to cite the document, as well as descriptions of the the document structure in order for the reader software to be able to present an interactive outline, support for actively re-building any dynamic view, descriptions of how to read/parse diagrams and in-document access to citations and more.
I have built a macOS word processor for authoring with visual-meta automatically appended, called 'Author', and a PDF reader called 'Reader' which interprets it. This is in order to test the practicality and usefulness of the system, which is the next stage of the research.
