Is "document" an anachronism? A couple of good reads.

Let's start with this idea: "By freeing ourselves from document-oriented thinking, we clear the way towards developing more efficient collaborative infrastructures (as opposed to tying ourselves to the older less efficient ones). So, before we encode that knowledge into some sort of document and debate what the format it should be stored in before we mail it around, why don't we think about the most efficient way to share that knowledge and work from there?" from IBM VP and OpenDocument Format evangelist Bob Sutor. So, we are going to be open about the fact that discourse and exchange can occur around ideas that might not find instantiation in a document, either of paper of pixels. Now, consider how our minds work, or as Vannevar Bush put it, As We May Think , which is a messy, non-linear but associative process. You are discussing communication for example, and someone utters the word "telephone." Depending on your age, hearing the word "telephone" the thought/concept of a wireless cellphone might come to mind and you might think of texting, and then perhaps a friend who recently texted you. For someone my age, "telephone" might trigger a fleeting memory of the days of party-lines and how you had to hang up if your neightbor was using the phone. (In those days, we did not brook surveillance of our private conversations.) So, instead of thinking in a linear way, our minds dart around based on associations brought up by words, pictures, etc. Vannevar proposed that the biggest revolution in thinking and technology would come when we devised a method of keeping track of ideas that reflected our natural bent toward association and would allow us to move beyond the artificial, but previously dependable, alphabetical filing method. Librarians have refined the alpha search to include keywords and other subtle refinements that are anything but natural, but are orderly and allow us to follow ideas. Vannevar said that we need a tool that allows the teacher to pass on a set of "trails" to his or her student that allows the student to traverse the same mental terrain that went into developing a theory or concept. Then comes Ted Nelson, who proposes hyperlinks, and the actual creation of the WWW which is designed around the use of hyperlinks. This is leading to the wonderful NYTimes Magazine article by Kevin Kelly Scan this Book from the May 14, 2006 issue. You probably need to register to read this, but IT IS WORTH IT. Kelly writes clearly and well, somewhere between the overly technical pedant and a reporter who doesn't know the subject very well. His analysis of copyright and his idea of "copyduty" and why the laws on copyright are so out of whack with what is needed to move forward both economically and intellectually, is right on target. Much of the agonizing over audience loss in the mass media stems from mindsets locked into old business models. Currently, the content industries--books, newspapers, music recording, movies, television, magazines, etc.-- are going through the kind of profound restructuring that the manufacturing industries experienced in the late 20th century. The old business models are broken. The assumptions underlying them just aren't true anymore. The govt and corporations can try and shore up the failing model, but it is gone like the smoke. Copies don't have any value anymore. It is the intangibles and occasionals around the copies that have value-- personal appearances, "add-ons" and special features. As an academic, I can see this and not be offended by it, as it likely won't take change the way I make a living too much. But for many in the content industries who have worked hard, it spells drastic change and some of those who found success in mass media in the analog world, won't make the transisition to digital. But while the future can be slowed or pushed back for a time, "the old order is rapidly changing" and if you can't get out the way or adapt, you're probably a goner, a dead creator walking so to speak.