Less cool than a doomsday book, but still kinda interesting.

The first thing that struck me upon opening up the Domesday Book page was that this weeks material was being presented in a completely different manner than last. Instead of a straightforward article I got a webpage that had many, many branching paths of information.

The amount of info presented in pretty much overwhelming, with almost no linear structure, one must go about their exploration of the site in a somewhat planned manner, scanning the FAQ's for questions that one was thinking; finding the "W"s. The Who's, What's, Why's etc...

I assume this change in presentation was a very, very intentional one. The Site for the Domesday book is presented in a very hypertextual way, with highlighted links that lead from item to item. The connection between the two readings is readily apparent.

As for the Domesday book itself, I'm really amazed that it managed to get compiled. After reading through a portion of the site, seeing what sort of effort that went into the compilation process. I found it hard to believe that such a large scale undertaking managed to get completed.
Aside from the gathering of information, it is the fact that it was gathered multiple times in order to check for accuracy which really impressed me.

The most interesting thing though, is the ironic circumstances regarding the 1986 'New Domesday' survey. The fact that the original book has lasted for around 900 years or so, while the once created on state of the art computers, circa 1986, is now obsolete and almost unusable. Irony like that just tickles my funnybone. It's another one of those old tech vs. new tech ordeals. And it's another thing that connected this reading with the previous.

Hypertapestry

"People in the 21st-Century western world tend to understand their lives as literary narratives with beginnings, endings, and dramatic middle parts. Did people think about their lives in this same linear fashion when they weren't literate? Probably not. Before people used writing, they didn't read books, and they didn't think in words. They thought more in pictures, and relied much more than does today's college student on experience, memory, and their own eyes and ears. You could say life then was less like a book and more like a Web page."

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This is the part of the article that I found to be the most aggravating. (Not to say the article bothered me, just this part really.) This assumption that one views their life as a literary narrative, is one that just doesn't ring true to me. To say that the cycle of life is literary, because it has a beginning and an end, seems absurd. Things were being born, and things were dying far before written language. In old cultures with a predominantly oral history, how are their stories less linear? I don't feel that being linear and being literary should be so closely associated.

So sure, people probably thought more in pictures back in the day than they did now, but doesn't an understanding of a spoken language make one think in words? Word association alone should make one do that. I don't really understand why the author describes the way people used to think as similar to a web page. Most web pages are filled with text elements.

Though I do agree with the points made about the usefulness of new technologies in learning. The presenting of the Tapestry in a digital form allows a closer inspection than one that would be given in a book. In a book the tapestry would have to be shrunken down and reproduced upon many different pages. A scrollable, digital version allows for a viewing of the whole tapestry in any way that one chooses. With links to info regarding any section only a click away, one's view ends up being more of the tapestry as a whole and less of a simple progression in one direction through the piece.

So the newfound ability to associate the visual elements of information with the textual, is one that is quickly influencing modern education. The branching elements of hypertext learning allows for better ease of use. I think that eventually most schooling will end up being presented in a similar digital fashion. It would seem to be an important advancement in helping to grasp knowledge. New technologies such as this are changing the way we read and write by enabling us to become more informed with greater ease.