<story><title>Memex is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed (2020)</title><url>https://filiph.net/text/memex-is-already-here,-it%27s-just-not-evenly-distributed.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mikewarot</author><text>There were 3 main features of the Memex that we just don&amp;#x27;t have.&lt;p&gt;Annotation - The ability to mark up hypertext... yeah... HTML claims to do it, but you can&amp;#x27;t change a document once it&amp;#x27;s read only. You should be able to layer annotations &lt;i&gt;on top of&lt;/i&gt; a document. HTML simply is not a Language for the Markup of Hypertext Documents.&lt;p&gt;[Edit&amp;#x2F;Extend] - Annotation is anything you could do with a printout, at minimum.  Circle something, highlight a section, black something out, attach links, etc. It&amp;#x27;s not just tagging a file as a black box.&lt;p&gt;Trails - the ability to store a trail of annotations, linking up parts of two documents together, or more. Like a stack of bookmarks, except bookmarks can&amp;#x27;t anchor to part of a document.&lt;p&gt;Publication - One of the crucial features of the Memex was the ability to output a collection to allow sharing with others. It could spit out a copy of everything linked to a trail, all the files, all in one dump.  Copyright holders would have a huge problem with Memex if it were implemented as originally shown.&lt;p&gt;I think it should be possible to build a proxy that records ALL local http(s) traffic, and thus record all the sources to documents you&amp;#x27;ve seen... and then only keep those that you&amp;#x27;ve tagged or linked to after a few months, purging the rest. A private Memex, but it couldn&amp;#x27;t even be an open source project, as copyright holders would work to squash it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bouvin</author><text>Oh, we did all that. I even wrote my PhD dissertation on it (2001). Back then, there were quite a few research projects working on what I then termed ‘Web Augmentation’. You could do it serverside, in special proxies, or in the browser through extensions or scripting. The earliest browser based system I know of that allowed users to insert links and annotations into existing Web pages was DHM&amp;#x2F;WWW, developed by yours truly in 1997 – we even won best paper for it at Hypertext 1997. This was a specialised case of what was then known as Open Hypermedia, i.e., a hypermedia system that could integrate (more or less) arbitrary documents and systems through links and other structures.&lt;p&gt;Using a more general architecture, it was possible to add many kinds of structures on top of existing Web pages collaboratively. Navigational or spatial hypermedia, guided tours, etc. Link bases were stored outside of the linked resources, so that you could have different sets of structures applied to a corpus of documents.&lt;p&gt;There were also quite a few commercial attempts in this space. However, all, commercial and research alike, ultimately failed, and I believe that there were several reasons behind this: Web site owners disliked that others could annotate their pages; shared link bases often became polluted; bookmarks were ‘good enough’ for most users; maintaining link anchor consistency in (increasingly dynamic) Web pages became more and more difficult (despite our best efforts); and while I remain enthused about the notion of the MEMEX scholar carefully annotating their corpus of literature, I don’t think the appeal is all that widespread.&lt;p&gt;Still, there are remnants in some systems – e.g., I enjoy to see that others have highlighted the same passage as I in a Kindle book.</text></comment>
<story><title>Memex is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed (2020)</title><url>https://filiph.net/text/memex-is-already-here,-it%27s-just-not-evenly-distributed.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mikewarot</author><text>There were 3 main features of the Memex that we just don&amp;#x27;t have.&lt;p&gt;Annotation - The ability to mark up hypertext... yeah... HTML claims to do it, but you can&amp;#x27;t change a document once it&amp;#x27;s read only. You should be able to layer annotations &lt;i&gt;on top of&lt;/i&gt; a document. HTML simply is not a Language for the Markup of Hypertext Documents.&lt;p&gt;[Edit&amp;#x2F;Extend] - Annotation is anything you could do with a printout, at minimum.  Circle something, highlight a section, black something out, attach links, etc. It&amp;#x27;s not just tagging a file as a black box.&lt;p&gt;Trails - the ability to store a trail of annotations, linking up parts of two documents together, or more. Like a stack of bookmarks, except bookmarks can&amp;#x27;t anchor to part of a document.&lt;p&gt;Publication - One of the crucial features of the Memex was the ability to output a collection to allow sharing with others. It could spit out a copy of everything linked to a trail, all the files, all in one dump.  Copyright holders would have a huge problem with Memex if it were implemented as originally shown.&lt;p&gt;I think it should be possible to build a proxy that records ALL local http(s) traffic, and thus record all the sources to documents you&amp;#x27;ve seen... and then only keep those that you&amp;#x27;ve tagged or linked to after a few months, purging the rest. A private Memex, but it couldn&amp;#x27;t even be an open source project, as copyright holders would work to squash it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hinkley</author><text>Someone at NSCA implemented annotations in Mosaic, but the bus number dropped to zero when they left and the available evidence seems to be that none of those of us after the exodus were familiar with Memex. I think a coworker recommended Vannevar Bush to me around 2006. Boy was that a Tyler Darden moment.&lt;p&gt;I think what the world has needed basically since then is browser integration for something like annotations, so that web sites and commentary about them can live together. And with less of a direct line to advertising dollars. Perhaps something that could live in the Fediverse. Sometimes I want HN’s opinion and sometimes I want someone else’s.</text></comment>