From a letter to Talan Memmott

My task here is to write an essay on The Roots of Nonlinearity: Toward a Theory of Web-Specific Work. Well, as intentional aim, nonlinearity seems to have been around in a popular way since the 70's so that's not new. And, yes, the history before it was called that, goes way way back even to the Song of Solomon. But quickly one arrives at hypertext and that's been pretty well tackled thoughout the 90s. So then, what's the problem.... What's missing? I think it has to do with depth, visibility and dynamism of the page. Lack of emotional investment in the writing is also a failing. With the addition of these things, possibly hypertext will become more satisfying.

I was thinking this morning about Gertrude Stein who said the problem with a play was that you have to keep refamiliarizing yourself with the characters, you couldn't comprehend it all at once like a landscape. Thus, she wanted to write a play like a landscape. All that jumping from page to page (totally new refreshed URL) has an abortive effect, suddenly with the rudeness I can't remember what has happened; I quickly lose interest in the characters and their paths. I think that allowing the links to unfold on the page in the way you've been experimenting with is one solution. To be able to see parts of what has gone before is important. We are not moles living in seperate holes, right? Visually being able to track is important unless you have a photographic memory. To create the layered, dynamical type of pages I'm working with is another approach. To have the playful interactivity (poetically) that Reiner Strasser has is yet another. Anyway, I think we're taking it in a viable direction.

The other area, the most important area for me, that I'm trying to articulate has to do with space-time. I know the importance; I don't quite have the vocabulary for it. Now I'm struggling, as I periodically do, with Chaos Theory and Strange Attractors (phase space, turbulence, pattern) and Hyperspace (10 dimensions).