Theory: Unpacking alternate timeline-views
Jorn Barger
rather than _alphabetical_ order-- chronological timelines add value
where alphabetical-sorting adds none.
But any text can be viewed according to many different chronologies:
1) the presentation-chronology is the normal published arrangement of
the text as the author (presumably) intended the reader to see it.
Most annotation-projects will respect this ordering.
2) the composition-chronology may re-sort the text, if it was written
out-of-order (eg Finnegans Wake: [2])
3) an events-chronology may rearrange it to reflect the order of
events, if the author has played games in the retelling (eg Ulysses
ch10, Wandering Rocks [3])
4) a character-biography is a variant on the events-chronology that
collates the scattered clues to reconstruct a character's life
beyond the chronological bounds of the text (eg Leopold Bloom [4]).
This can also be done for events viewed via multiple, unreliable
perspectives (eg in Ulysses the Gold Cup race [5])
5) a 'secondary-text chronology' may use the presentation-chronology
of a second text to trace thematic parallels and allusions (eg Ulysses
vis-a-vis the Odyssey [6], the Old Testament [7], or the New Testament
[8])
6) a thematic chronology may extract all allusions to some theme, and
arrange them according to a timeline for that theme (eg Joyce's
allusions to the history of Ireland [9] or Judeo-Christianity [10])
Another way to look at this is that the 'default' hypertext extension
for most paper-published non-fiction is a compact alphabetical index
in the back. Occasionally, an adventurous author will substitute
an index sorted in chronological order, but conservatism (and the
economics of paper) militate against this.
Web-publishing needs to throw off those old economic equations [11]
and begin expanding and augmenting those limited-hypertext-style
indexes [12] with multiple views, including (but not limited to)
these chronological variants.
[1] http://www.robotwisdom.com/web/infodesign.html
[2] http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/newgame.html
[3] http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/ulysses/wr.html
[4] http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/ulysses/bloom.html
[5] http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/ulysses/goldcup.html
[6] http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/ulysses/homeric.html
[7] http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/oldtest.html
[8] http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/newtest.html
[9] http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/ireland/
[10] http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/church.html
[11] http://www.robotwisdom.com/web/academia.html
[12] http://groups.google.com/groups?th=a26c9466eb0a547e
Paul Ilechko
> Basic info-design theory [1] rightly favors sorting by _chronological_
> rather than _alphabetical_ order-- chronological timelines add value
> where alphabetical-sorting adds none.
Basic propaganda theory shows that if you say absolute bullshit in an
assertive enough manner, lots of people will actually believe you.
Arjun Ray
This is because Propaganda Theory is an application of Bullshit Theory.
: One who is concerned to report or to conceal the facts assumes that
: there are indeed facts that are in some way both determinate and
: knowable. His interest in telling the truth or in lying presupposes
: that there is a difference between getting things wrong and getting
: them right, and that it is at least occasionally possible to tell the
: difference. Someone who ceases to believe in the possibility of
: identifying certain statements as true and others as false can have
: only two alternatives. The first is to desist both from efforts to
: tell the truth and from efforts to deceive. This would mean refraining
: from making any assertion whatever about the facts. The second
: alternative is to continue making assertions that purport to describe
: the way things are but that cannot be anything except bullshit.
(See http://www.jelks.nu/misc/articles/bs.html )
[f'ups set]
Daniel R. Tobias
> Basic info-design theory [1] rightly favors sorting by _chronological_
> rather than _alphabetical_ order-- chronological timelines add value
> where alphabetical-sorting adds none.
Doesn't this depend rather heavily on what sort of information is
being presented and for what purpose it's intended to be used? A
blanket statement that chronological sorting is better than
alphabetical surely doesn't apply to all cases. Dictionaries and
encyclopedias would be much harder to use if they were sorted
chronologically (whether by the date the entry was written or the date
events referenced in it occurred) rather than alphabetically.
(However, such a chronological sort might be of some interest to
browse; that's an advantage of a database-driven information resource
which can be programmed to present its data in many different views
and orders.)
Where lists of things in Web sites is concerned, the most useful
"default" presentation order (that is, the order presented to a new
user entering the site, intended as the best way to access and
understand the information, although other views might also be
available in the site and might even be user-configurable for repeat
visitors if the site is database-generated) varies depending on the
nature of the information:
* A historical chronology is best presented in order from earlier to
later.
* A "What's New" page showing things recently updated in a site is
best presented in order from newest to earliest.
* A discussion forum is best presented in a threaded view by topic,
probably with most recent threads first, but messages in forward order
within a thread.
* An itemization of things (e.g., my "Brand X Browsers" list) is best
presented alphabetically, so, for instance, somebody who wants to see
what I say about Lynx can find it at the appropriate point.
--
Dan
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dantobias.com/
Deckster
> rather than _alphabetical_ order-- chronological timelines add value
> where alphabetical-sorting adds none.
>
> But any text can be viewed according to many different chronologies:
>
(yes, really).
According to the "many-worlds" or multiverse interpretation of quantum
mechanics (which I don't really believe, but never mind), there are an
infinite number of alternative threads linking together events in
spacetime. Sometimes these threads interfere destructively and
sometimes they reinforce each other, yielding a most-probable
narrative.
A given chronology is just a self-consistent story. But there may be
many such self-consistent stories. Ditto for hypertext. Or for a
productive hour of "random" web-surfing.
see
http://www.weburbia.com/press/html/gframe.htm
To quote from the above source:
To understand the physics of event-symmetric space-time which I am
going to explain, you must imagine that the universe is built this
way. There are many possible stories and where stories fit together in
a self-consistent way they combine to form many different universes.
Each of us has a life which is a story somewhere in these universes.
We should not expect our future to be completely determined since what
we have experienced up to now could fit into many stories with
different endings. Even our pasts, and events happening elsewhere in
our present, may not be fully determined, yet we are guaranteed a
consistent story in the end. The storyteller's arena of universes is
called the multiverse and this is the storyteller's paradigm.