Bill Bly  3/15/05 - Person

Bill Bly wrote one of my favorite hypertexts so far. And he seems to present hypertexts that work in a way that makes sense to me... as ways to connect fragments; tools for creating the gossamer spiderweb strands that bind and separate our more substantial thoughts; as masses of information for which the discovery of the structures is as integral to learning as is the information itself. There must be a better way to articulate that. I'm sure I'll find it as I read on.

I just discovered his blog within his personal site, and that's part of what has me writing this entry. I realize now that the people section of t.org is growing with a bias toward blogs. The blogosphere is fertilizing its growth, and it is responding ... blogotropically?

Bill has a page about his work with hypertext. He approaches it from a refreshing angle. Rather than looking into hypertext systems as tools for new work, he is approaching them as the lesser of evils: as attempts at software which are with regard to the way we think perhaps less flawed than the word processor, spreadsheet, or operating system. That's another take on one of the things that keeps me interested in the field-- I think hypertexts more accurately represent the ways we think and communicate.