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Making Revisions Hyper-Visible
David Kolb
Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus of
Philosophy
Bates College, Lewiston, Maine
841 W. 36th Avenue
Eugene OR 97405 USA
01 541 345 3110
dkolb@b ates.edu
ABSTRACT
What should a revised edition of a hypertext be? How m ight
revising a hypertext differ from reissuing a printed book? This
essay suggests a revision process that is self-reflexive and
explicitly made visible, taking advantage of the ability of
hypertext to expand the "margins" of a document in new
directions. Where the issues are complex enough, the process
of revision should be part of what is presented, not just a
machine rumbling in the background that issues in a separate
product.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
H.5.4 Hypertext/Hypermedia, Architecture, Navigation, Theory,
User Issues
General Terms
Human Factors, Standardization, Theory
Keywords
Hypertext, writing, revising, links, publication
1. INTRODUCTION
The story goes that Plato revised his masterwork, The
Republic, seventy-seven times. After Immanuel Kant's ten-year
effort that led to the publication of the Critique of Pure
Reason [8] in 1781, Kant published a revised edition six years
later that seriously changed some of the core arguments of the
book. Poets such as Walt Whitman, W. H. Auden [1], and
others, revised their poems when they appeared in subsequent
editions.
A recent dialogue between two contemporary poets discussed
the motives for revising poems:
Donald Hall: Some writers hesitate to revise older
work. When you revise an old poem, what is the
relationship for you between the writer you were, say,
twenty years ago, and the writer you are now?
Martin Lammon: I am the irritable elder correcting
the young man's mistakes, glad the young man is not
around to bite my head off. When I revise an old
poem, I'm removing error; I'm substituting not new
invention but something that will do: invisi bl e
mending. [4]
The philosopher David Kaplan at UCLA once published an
article criticizing another article by a philosopher at UCLA
named David Kaplan: "Kaplan said XYZ but Kaplan's argument
was mistaken . . .". More commonly, revisions are announced
in the first person: "In an earlier book or article I claimed that
XYZ but I now see that PQR is a better approach." Sometimes
such corrections appear in the text with footnotes describing
the earlier view, or the earlier text is supplemented with a
footnote about "what I would now say".
Revision is a normal part of publication and republication. I
might revise my poems because the word choice now seems
wrong, or revise my novel to improve the characterization, or
revise my argumentative text because, like Kant, I thought I
had found a better argument, or because, like Plato, I wanted to
improve the style and extend the argument, or because, like
Auden with some of his more political poems, external
circumstances had changed in ways that led people to misread
the meaning of the work [12]. I might want to add new
examples and applications, or correct mistakes of fact or logic
or style. Perhaps I predicted something that didn't happen
when technology, or business, or politics, went in a direction
that I had not foreseen.
An artist might want to revise a play to accommodate different
actors (Shakespeare’s revisions, and those of different
directors of his plays), or a piece of music to suit different
singers (Mozart’s Don Giovanni). A film director might want
to get the film’s original intent better presented (Blade
Runner). In these cases, typically both the old and the new
versions stay available, and film DVDs may present a meta-
discussion of the revisions in a special sound track. Some
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work
for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that
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advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on
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or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a
fee.
HTí08, June 19-21, 2008, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
Copyright 2008 ACM 978-1-59593-985-2/08/06...$5.00.
books do the same in an introduction or appendix or
footnotes.
1. REVISING BOOKS
For books, most of the time revisions appear in a seco nd
edition that replaces the first in commerce, though the earlier
version often remains in libraries. Readers are often better
served by keeping both versions accessible.
W. H. Auden revised many of his previously published poems
when they appeared in volumes of his Collected Poems. But
the earlier versions remained available in small magazines and
books. So the revision allowed comparisons rather than ful ly
replacing the earlier versions.
When Kant published the second edition of his Critique, he
intended it to replace the first edition. But given the
complexities of Kant's arguments, subsequent philosophers
and scholars wanted both available. Now standard editions of
Kant show in parallel columns both versions of sign ificant
sections that Kant rewrote.
When the philosopher Hegel died unexpectedly at age 61, hIs
students took his lecture notes and student transcripts of his
lectures and amalgamated them into texts that presented his
ideas systematically [5]. Those lectures have always been more
accessible than the austere books Hegel himself published.
However, in composing the volumes of lectures, Hegel's
students mashed together texts and lines of thought from
classes as much as ten years apart. Now, scholars have been
seeking out what remains of those original lecture transcripts,
trying to understand the development of Hegel's thought.
While it can be important to scholars to study changes in
different versions of literary works, it may be even more
important to keep available different versions of
argumentative texts. Was Kant right to abandon certain
concepts and lines of argument in his second edition? Perhaps
Hegel in his early years as a lecturer, before he became so
established in Berlin, had ideas about politics that would be
more helpful to us than his later ideas? Some revisions of
exposition and argument result from more mature
consideration, or changed context. Some, though, may result
from a failure of nerve or a dulling of the sharp edges of an
insight. So it is good to have both old and new versions
available.
But while printed texts may be abundant, print publication is
still ruled by a scarcity economy. The new edition spreads,
while the old edition gets harder and harder to find unless
special efforts are made. Even if the printed older version is in
a library somewhere, it is not here, now, when we want to
compare the old and the new.
1. REVISING HYPERTEXTS
1.1 General Considerations
Hypertext publication is at least in principle ruled by an
economy of abundance. There is the continual expansion of
the Web, and there is Ted Nelson's principle that every version
submitted should remain always accessible in the archive at
any time.
The Web, in its present form does not live up to many of
Nelson's ideals, as he will repeatedly tell you, but it does
manage to make its contents widely accessible. On the other
hand, those who manage web sites do not try to keep older
versions around. Third parties such as the Wayback machine
and to some extent Google caches may do so, but there is no
systematic way to be sure that earlier versions persist.
It would be good if a revised hypertext contained not just
references and links to an earlier version, but meta-discussion
about the process of revision itself, and how and why the text
had been changed. This kind of discussion would be out of
place in literary works, but for expository/argumentative
works it would be taking advantage of the ability of hypertext
to change the dimensionality of a discussion and add self-
reflection.
For the most part, literary hypertexts (novels, poems, multi-
media works, and works in new genres) would not benefit from
explicit internal links to older versions, nor would they be
helped by having their new portions specially highlighted.
Michael Joyce's novella afternoon [7] was the first literary
hypertext to achieve wide notice. Stuart Moulthrop's novel
Victory Garden [11] followed soon after, along with Shelley
Jackson's Patchwork Girl [6]. John Cayley has composed
exciting intricately structured multi-media poems and literary
works using Hypercard and later Flash, as in riverisland [3].
All these texts contain complex link structures that create
strong literary effects. afternoon provides no visual map of
the structure; the reader must seek out individual words that
will yield new pieces of the story. A revision of afternoon
would be essentially invisible; the work's structure is
sufficiently labyrinthine that readers would see any added
section or path as just something they had missed before. If
the new parts were highlighted by typography or special links,
the continuity of the reader's experience would be disrupted.
This is also the case with Victory Garden and Patchwork Girl,
though they have maps where additions could be indicated.
Cayley's works are already complex visually and textually; it
would not help the literary effects to interrupt their experience
by calling attention to revisions. Those who wanted to trace
the development of the work would likely be scholars who
could compare versions actively, and for that it would be good
to have an external listing of the versions rather than internal
links to earlier texts.
On the other hand, argumentative and expository works would
benefit from visible revision. Suppose such a work has been in
circulation, and people have been convinced by its arguments,
or disagreed with them, or at least have reacted to and referred
to them. If then a revision appeared, it would be helpful for its
reception and understanding to see where and why the author
had altered the text or changed its meaning or the conclusions
or applications it draws. In what follows I discuss some
techniques for making the process of revision visible in
hypertexts on and off the Web.
For example, another Eastgate text, David Kolb's Socrates in
the Labyrinth [9], is all exposition and argument and makes
claims about whether argumentative hypertext is useful and
how it might be written. The text has been quoted and cited. If
Kolb wanted to produce a second edition in which he changed
his opinions and arguments, or expanded and applied them in
new ways, it would be helpful for readers familiar with the first
edition to know where the changes were located. If Kolb had
come to doubt that some of his arguments were conclusive, or
had come to feel that changed circumstances inval idated
earlier analyses, it would be good if that rationale were
signaled to the readers, whether or not they had seen the earlier
edition. So it would help if the revisions and their rationale
were made visible as such.
1.1 Strategies for Visible Revisions
So the question arises whether there might be hypertextual
ways of assuring that the old is accessible along with the new.
The obvious answer is to link them. But this answer is vague.
How could such links be implemented?
The simplest procedure would be to maintain both versions
and put a link in each that leads to the other. In Ted Nelson's
ideal hypertext scheme, both versions would be available and
could be actively compared. Nelson has developed tools for
parallel presentation of related texts. This is less likely on the
Web, where comparing two versions would be confusing in a
browser window, and a parallel presentation would be difficult
though not impossible.
Keeping the two versions intact but connected by a link in
each version resembles the way two separate volumes in a
library might be linked by a footnote in the later edition and a
reference in the library catalog. For a complex web site,
maintaining two separate versions with links between them
would confuse readers arriving (or trying to arrive) from search
engine lists. Also, simply providing access to both versions
leaves comparison up to the reader, and gives no insight into
what the author thinks are significant changes in the argument,
and why they were made.
Rather than just link two separate versions, it would be better
to have the new replace the old but also include enough of the
old to clarify changes and allow meta-discussion about the
rationale for the revisions. Hypertexts are not so separate as
volumes in a library. An old version can be brought "inside" a
new one once there are enough links that readers can move
back and forth from one to the other. But what kind of links?
More capable hypertext systems allow more kinds of links. For
example, off the Web, Eastgate Systems publishes hypertexts
on disk containing Storyspace files presented by reader
software included on the disk. These allow two-way links,
conditional links, and other facilities that would make it easier
to create a complex new version that self-consciously related
to the old. For instance, conditional links could route readers
from the old to the new, or make sure that the revision was seen
before (or after) the earlier text, or that the meta-discussion
stayed visible. Links from one anchor could montage multiple
windows showing old, new, and meta-discussion of the
changes. Spatial maps could be embellished with graphical
distinctions among old, new, and meta-discussions.
On the other hand, republishing such works on disk would not
make them available on the Web or to search engines. If the
Eastgate hypertexts were to be taken from disks and put on the
web, either the web version would be flatter and less complex,
or it would have to be designed using Flash or Director, or
perheaps EMCAScript or a server-side Rails process.
Whatever presentation mode is chosen, how are the versions to
relate?
I am not speaking about merely indicating changes to the
wording, as can be done with Word's "track changes" mode. A
step in the right direction is found in Wiki lists of edits. These
are not presented in the text but are accessible to readers, who
can also compare early and late versions. Some of the edits are
accompanied by brief comments about why they were made.
However, I am suggesting that the entire process of revision be
made visible in the text, including the changes as well as meta-
discussion on why they were made, plus links to parallel
changes elsewhere in the text. How might this be done?
If the goal is to make the revisions effective but also visible as
revisions, a simple scheme would be to make minimal changes
to the hypertext structure. Keep the original text and links of
the old version, and make changes only by graphically
distinctive additions to the text of individual nodes. This
would have the benefit of tying changes directly to older text.
For example, some bloggers discourage changing blog posts
once they have been published. People may have added
comments, or linked to the post, and readers should be able to
see the original version that caused the reactions. So these
bloggers do revisions either as separate new posts with links
back to the old version, or as "Updates" added at the end of
older posts. So we might imagine a expository/argumentative
hypertext like Socrates reissued with its original text and link
structure intact, but with important nodes containing
"updates" added at the end of the node's text.
This would not be a particularly good solution, since if new
arguments and points of view were being presented, the
updates added to the original nodes would beg to have links
among themselves. Also, the author would likely want to add
new nodes presenting the new views more fully than cutting
them up as a series of additions to previous nodes. This would
introduce new links. Even if the new links might start out from
old nodes, there would soon be a larger and more complex
structure than the old version.
It seems inevitable, then, that a revision would add new textual
dimensions, nodes and links. It might be good to distinguish
old from new, and perhaps both from meta-discussions, by
typographical style, link types, colors, or other means
depending on the presentation system. It would also be useful
to create one or more index nodes listing and linking to
significant changes in the text. Web hypertexts with
navigation bars provide an easy opportunity to add such
references.
A related strategy might be to have software that possessed a
textual history function after the fashion of VKB's spatial
history, or some version of stretchtext. After reading a node
the reader could regress the text to earlier version(s). While
helpful, such a facility would not provide direct v is ual
comparison nor highlight meta-discussions of the reasons for
or the import of the revisions.
1.1 Author(s) and Editor(s)
Introducing meta-discussions about the revision raises the
issue of authorship. Are revisions by a single author an undue
assertion of authorial power that is out of place in the age of
Wikis and linked blogs? Ongoing multiple authorship is not
practical in printed texts that do not change, but it is possible
on the Web. Hypertext was supposed to empower the reader.
Then maybe instead of a single-author revision, the process of
revising a text like Socrates should be opened up to other
writers?
The quick answer to this question would be that "the wisdom
of the crowd" works best to collect information or to
amalgamate preferences. But for an argumentative text, even
with seventy-seven revisions no crowd has produced a
Republic. Nor is one likely to produce a work like Kant's
Critique that undermines so many accepted methods and
proposes a radical new approach to core problems it redefines
in unexpected ways. (See [10] for a discussion of the frequent
leveling effects of group authorship.)
It would be a bad idea to let unlimited crowds attempt to revise
a long complex hypertext that was trying to make arguments
for its conclusions. On the other had, it might be good to let a
limited panel of commentators or colleagues be involved in a
major revision, putting their comments and author's reactions
into the text. Some web journals work towards this. But even
in such a case the original author would retain a privilege
because the discussion would much of the time center around
that author's ideas and intentions. In addition, there are the
practical difficulties highlighted by Mark Bernstein's
objections to allowing comments on blogs and web sites [2].
If multiple authors were involved in a revision process, the
result might borrow from structures and mechanisms found in
the scholarly cross-reference schemes developed by Simon
Buckingham Shum and others in the UK. However, the
hypertext presentation of the underlying relations would be a
separate issue. (See [13] for examples.)
A related question might be whether making revision visible
implies that hypertexts should also make their initial editing
visible, as Word documents can do. But even Ted Nelson never
said that every one of the dozens of versions of this essay
before it was submitted should be preserved. Initial editing is
not a process that needs to be visible, since it comes before
there is any argument presented for people to react and look
back to. Of course the distinction between initial editing and
revision gets blurred, especially on a Web site that is under
constant revision. But we can make a rough distinction
between before and after the first public presentation of an
argument or exposition.
The question of single versus multiple authorship is not the
main issue. Having multiple voices could be useful to
introduce comment and response and show revision in
process. But the process still needs to have good hypertextual
form, and that is the issue here.
1.2 Why Bother?
Why bother with such a complexity of revision and meta-
discussion? What good can it do? In argumentative texts it can
do a great deal. The availability of Kant's two versions and
their visual comparison in two columns on a printed page has
made an enormous difference both to scholarship and as a
stimulus to thought. If we could compare some of Plato's
earlier versions we might understand his enigmatic texts
better. Making the process of revision visible in an
argumentative hypertext allows more precise argumentation. It
also functions as a form of persuasion: "You see, I'm being
responsible and self-critical." On the other hand it a ls o
increases the vulnerability of the author and the product. The
little man behind the curtain is revealed. As an author I could
be making bad changes, or good changes for bad reasons. Or
the process could lead both author and the reader to new
thoughts. There is more chance to find insight, and more
opportunity for criticism. The shared project of thinking
things out then has more to work with.
2. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to Mark Bernstein for comments on an earlier
version of this essay.
3. REFERENCES
[1] Auden, W. H. 1945. The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden.
New York: Random House.
[2] Bernstein, M. 1996. "37 Signals on Blog Comments."
December 23, 1996. DOI=
http://markbernstein.org/Dec0601/37SignalsonBlogCom
ments.html
[3] Cayley, John. 2005. riverisland QT. (and other works)
DOI= http://homepage.mac.com/shadoof/net/in/
[4] Hall, D., and M. Lammon. 1993. "Flying Revision's Flag."
Kestral. DOI=
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16223
[5] Hegel, G. W. F. 1998. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art.
Translated by T. M. Knox. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
[6] Jackson, S. 1995. Patchwork Girl. Watertown: Eastgate
Systems.
[7] Joyce, M. 1990. afternoon, a story. Watertown: Eastgate
Systems.
[8] Kant, I. 1973. The Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by
Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan.
[9] Kolb, D. 1995. Socrates in the Labyrinth. Watertown:
Eastgate Systems.
[10] Lanier, J. 2006. "DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the
New Online Collectivism." Edge 183 — May 30, 2006
DOI= http://www.edge.com [5.30.06] .
[11] Moulthrop, Stuart. 1993. Victory Garden. Watertown:
Eastgate Systems.
[12] Mendelson, E. 1996. "Revision and Power: The Example
of W. H. Auden," Yale French Studies, No. 89, Drafts
(1996), pp. 103-112d
[13] Shum, S. B. Various essays and software projects at DOI=
http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/sbs/research/index.html
,
and especially http://cohere.open.ac.uk/.
