Although the recent popularity of the InterNet has enabled many designers and educators to become conversant with 'hypertext', most current (HTML) systems employ rigid hierarchic structures, are barely interactive, and tend to 'dumb-down' the information presented. Conceived within a post-Enlightenment mindset, hypertext was originally intended for military, rather than for educational or commercial purposes. Within today's consumerist culture it has tended to become commodified as a convenient instrument of information access, rather than as a catalyst for productive learning and communication.
The author adapts ideas by the physicist, David Bohm - principally, his metaphor of 'relevation' - as an underlying principle for the design of a networked hypertext authoring system. Such a system is intended to facilitate stronger author-communities by emphasising psychoanalytical cues, and by emphasising the embodied nature of how we 'relevate' knowledge, whether individually, or collectively. This approach is also intended as a challenge to the outcome-centred, instrumentalist tenets of Western dualistic design.
History
School
Design
Research Unit
IDATER Archive
Pages
34145 bytes
Citation
WOOD, J., 1998. Can hypertext 'relevate' tacit design information? IDATER 1998 Conference, Loughborough: Loughborough University