Weaving The Web

In his book 'Weaving the Web' [1], Sir Tim Berners-Lee notes that when striving to produce a 'final document' a great deal of preparatory material, such as notes and early drafts, is lost, '… background research vanishes, and the reasoning that brought the … endpoint is lost' (p176). The point appears to be that a lot is lost when aspiring to attain prescribed endpoints. I have certainly experienced this when writing academic papers. More tends to be edited out than makes the final piece. This is most frustrating as one sees interesting material get excluded because of the need to conform to journal style and editorial satisfaction. In creating this website, one does not have to worry about excluding ideas for the sake of making the final product conform to some acceptable style. No relevant idea is being suppressed for any reason.

Importantly, Berners-Lee asserts that 'the method of storage must not place its own restraints on the information' and that 'a "web" of notes with links (like references) between them is far more useful than a fixed hierarchical system' (p233). He also makes the suggestion that one should 'allow a pool of information to develop' (p233). This fits well with my tendency toward spatial thinking.

I take Berners-Lee's suggestion as support for the approach I am taking. The more so since, the publication of 'Weaving the Web' pre-dates my decision to adopt this approach and I made that decision before having read the book.

Note

1 - See: Berners-Lee, T. (2000). Weaving the Web: the past, present and future of the World Wide Web by its inventor. London: Texere.