So, how important is hypertext in effecting a coherent
dissemination of an informand and in turn an accurate reception
of this informand? I think hypertext in it's present form does
not necessarily satisfy these demands. Admittedly, there are
many different forms of information transfer. Moulthorp
distinguishes "knowledge transfer" and "Data aquisition;" while
the latter is very rigid, the former is very flexible--or is it?
Moulthorp raises an important point about educational,
or training, infomation. I think that the principle feature of
education is to transfer data as well as knowledge. So how
does hypertext effect this? Hypertext is essentially
fragmentary and slightly hierarchical. I've yet to run across
a web page that seeks to educate while not being hierarchical.
The question is this: how flexible is the mind to gain an
accurate understanding of an "object-event?" Are we going into
a process in which we are making everything smaller. Even
information has to be in tiny, packaged nodes drifting around.
Is randomness now going to be the currency of information?
That's gotta be bad.