Re: Information - what is it?

Robert Foster ([email protected])
Wed, 8 Jun 94 11:57:01 EDT


Greetings,

:: From: Alastair Aitken CLMS <[email protected]>
:: Date: Wed, 8 Jun 1994 12:58:36 +0200
::
:: Lying in bed last night I thought of information on the web in terms of
:: candy floss. I probably spend too much time on usenet (sorry) but the
:: image is not bad. A needle in a haystack also springs to mind.

On the other side of the pond, in the US, we have something called
cotton candy. A mess of thin cottony-like sugar and flavor on a paper
cone. Is candy floss the same thing? :) I see you write from the UK.

:: Information is all things to all men, all women. Our own particular needle,
:: vector(?), is what we want and our problem is how to find it. E=mc2 (can't
:: quite format that one) is information about the world which is completely
:: packageable - it matters and it means something. It is also a starting
:: point for Manhattan to North Korea.
::
:: This is my favourite list.
::
:: Tell me to shut up.

Don't shut up, just talk to yourself a little more often. :)

:: Al. <-:< ([email protected])
::

But seriously, I notice that mosaic implements a .mosaic-global-history
file that contains entries stored from a user's selections in the form:

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html

followed by a date.

This is stored in the user's home directory and would best be kept as
a private access file. It seems to me that this would be a good place to
start with a user defined *thread*. Allowing a user to log, format the
sequence, edit these entries in to a customized home page, format them
in a visual way, group them semantically, etc. is something that I have
already wished for already. Perhaps some browsers implement this
already?

--
Robert K. Foster
Analyst / Designer / Programmer
Mid-Michigan MRI, Inc., Lansing, MI, USA
[email protected]