The problem with trees Many systems are organized hierarchically. The CERNDOC documentation system is an example, as is the Unix file system, and the VMS/HELP system. A tree has the practical advantage of giving every node a unique name. However, it does not allow the system to model the real world. For example, in a hierarchical HELP system such as VMS/HELP, one often gets to a lead on a tree such as: HELP COMPILER SOURCE_FORMAT PRAGMAS DEFAULTS only to find a reference to another leaf: Please see HELP COMPILER COMMAND OPTIONS DEFAULTS PRAGMAS and it is necessary to leave the system and re-enter it. What was needed was a link from one node to another, because in this case the information was not naturally organized into a tree. Tim Berners-Lee, Seeing With Fresh Eyes A City Is Not a Tree hierarchywww
Cool URIs don't change An Essay by Tim Berners-Lee www.w3.org What makes a cool URI? A cool URI is one which does not change. What sorts of URI change? URIs don't change: people change them. The User Interface of URLs www
Designing Synced Blocks An Article by Ryo Lu www.notion.so Theodor H. Nelson, “As We Will Think." Proceedings of Online 72 Conference, Bruanel University, Uxbridge, England, 1972 What if the exact same information could live and breathe in multiple places? For example, if your company’s process for requesting time off changes, you’d probably have to find all the pages that mention the policy and manually update each of them. Synced Blocks changes that. Instead of going through and updating the process to request time off in every page it’s referenced, turning it into a Synced Block allows you to update it once and have those changes reflected everywhere. Even though it’s a simple idea, it opens up many possibilities for how information can be structured and shared. TransclusionOpen Transclude for Networked WritingProject XanaduThe brilliance of notion hypermedia