Daily Blog 4

Konnor Drewen

1/27/011

Will a "hypertext" world make us more accepting of cyclic history?

            Well, a hypertext is by definition- a special type of database system, invented by Ted Nelson in the 1960s, in which objects (text, pictures, music, programs, and so on) can be creatively linked to each other. (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/H/hypertext.html) and cyclic history by definition is- a doctrine that all events occur in cycles that are more or less alike. It has two main forms, one that posits cosmic cycles and one that posits cycles only in human affairs.  (http://frank.mtsu.edu/~nboone/theoryhistory.pdf) So if people applied that to showing a cyclic timeline than yes I think it would make us more accepting of cyclic history. If we had a cyclic timeline in a hypertext world than on the timeline you could select a date the timeline and bring up more information on that event. That information could lead to other graphs and how that event was triggered and when. Then you could go to the next event and see how the first event triggered the second event. Then there could be information shown when selecting it and so on into the next events. This could make us more accepting of cyclic history because it would not just be two to five events circling around each other it would be able to show what caused the events and how they eventually lead back into each other. So if we did have a hypertext world and he used it in this fashion I think that it would make the world more accepting of cyclic history.