DT 307 - THE WEB AND THE MIND
MANDATE 1
Name: S.Prasanth
Roll No: IMT2017525
WEB AS AN EXTENSION OF HUMAN MIND
Abstract
Our understanding of the world is largely determined by our ability to organize information. We organize the data to understand, to explain and to control everything
happening around us. Our own brains are brilliant at storing and retrieving information that’s important to us, like the taste of food we love or the smile of someone
we love. Hypertext used in the web exactly reflects the nature of the human mind
itself. This article attempts to model the web as an extension of human mind by
stating how hypertext environments mimic the associative structure of the brain.
Introduction
Is the Web a library? Is it a digital library? In addition to storing content, digital
libraries provide means for organizing, searching, and retrieving the content contained in the collection. Because we sometimes try to treat information on the Web
similarly to the way we organize information in a library, does that necessarily mean
that the Web is a library?
Web users can organize Web documents into ”clusters” that can be managed, searched,
and accessed. These clusters or libraries have taken many forms. Perhaps the most
common are the ”jump pages,” or Web page collections of hypertext links that
point to other Web pages or Web sites with a defined content. And this is exactly
how the information is stored in human mind, more accurately, more readily and
extrapolated from in all the senses, emotionally and intellectually.
Vannevar Bush’s 1945 vision of the memex
The memex1 is a device in which individuals would compress and store all of their
books, records, and communications, ”mechanized so that it may be consulted with
exceeding speed and flexibility”. It would provide an ”enlarged intimate supplement
to one’s memory”. The vision of the memex is credited as the inspiration for the
first practical hypertext systems of the 1960s.
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At the time Vannevar Bush2 saw the current ways of indexing information as limiting
and instead proposed a way to store information that was analogous to the mental
association of the human brain: storing information with the capability of easy access
at a later time using certain cues. According to him, hypertext reflects the nature of
the human mind itself because we think associatively, not linearly, hypertext allows
us to write as we think. Modern hypertext systems with word and phrase-level
linking offers more sophistication in connecting relevant information. But until the
rise of Wikipedia, modern hypertext systems have rarely imitated Bush in providing
individuals with the ability to create personal trails and share them with others.
conclusion
Every web user creates hyperlinks on their own and it’s their attention and decisions
that flows through the hyperlinks. He is the one who feels that the web page in the
hyperlink is related to the content he is creating. Therefore the web doesn’t only
contain the information but also carries the intentions of the people who wrote
it. This changes the idea of web as a passive entity and makes the web an active
ecosystem where human decisions are embedded in the structure of the web.
References
1) https : //slate.com/technology/2013/03/cognitive − enhancement − how − the −
internet − is − expanding − our − minds.html
2) https : //blogs.ubc.ca/etec540sept12/2012/11/10/learning−through−hypertext/
3) https : //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M emex
4) https : //docstore.mik.ua/orelly/web2/inf oarch/ch030 1.htm
5) https : //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V annevarB ush
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