Introduction
I’ve long taken for granted how easy it is to surf the web. Whether exploring Wikipedia or stumbling upon random hypertext projects, I can intuitively figure out how to get where I want to go several clicks before I get there. Furthermore, I can usually take for granted that my destination exists before opening a browser. Any perspective on any topic is available without having to leave my desk. For these reasons, learning online cultivates a frame of mind that emphasizes curiosity above authority, teaching epistemic confidence through play.
But this ease of use was not always so. The early days of hypermedia design were fraught with the “navigation problem” (Tilton and Andrews, 1993), confusing readers as the consequence of a poorly placed spatial metaphor. In this paper, I’ll explore the nature of information “space” through the development of hypermedia, trace its implications for Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and consider how those lessons can be generalized to online knowledge communities.
The Early Development of Hypermedia
Hypermedia as a medium encourages nonlinear exploration because its defining device, the link, sets the reader to expect meaningful relationships between materials in the hyperbase (Landow, 1989). Hypermedia’s rhetorical task then, is to orient the reader to the relation between their current location and the rest of the hyperbase (including materials the current page doesn’t link to). Note that this “space” is a semantic one. Cohesive paths unfold according to some question or theme about the content in the hyperbase.
The navigation problem arose from misapplying the intuitive notion of cyberspace to interface design. Instead of guiding readers through related topics, the spatial metaphor was applied to the link topology, becoming like a museum organized around a labyrinth of underground tunnels. Hypermedia designers were mapping what they understood to be a pre-existing information space instead of recognizing that their maps constituted the space (Tilton and Andrews, 1993). The metaphor’s assumptions lead the interface to mediate the organization of the data instead of the other way around (Caporal and Viemont, 1997).
However, geographic hypermedia avoids these pitfalls through what Caporal and Viemont (1997) call the cartographic metaphor, where geographical and non-geographical material are accessed through a real map. GIS interfaces require affordances to dynamically display a user-specific subset of the hyperbase, for there’s a real space to represent. This precludes organizing the data around a system-wide information space, and because non-geographic data is also understood through the cartographic metaphor, spatial proximity doesn’t falsely imply semantic proximity.
As hypermedia design matured, navigation came to be understood temporally rather than spatially. This coincided with an emphasis on agency and the rise of a narrative metaphor for interface design (Tilton and Andrews, 1993). Beyond reducing readers’ cognitive load, this made point of view the focal aspect of information (Laurel et al. 1990). Interestingly, hypermedia’s maturity led scholars in GIS to revisit their notion of space as well.
Geographic Space in the Information Age
Web 2.0 (non-static, user-editable) applications from the late 2000s onward have given rise to neogeography, characterized by a shift to bottom-up practices for geographic data (Warf and Sui, 2010). Among its implications, the authors note more attention being given to a relational concept of space. Relational space emphasizes interconnected complex networks and their points of view, understanding space topologically rather than physically. This entails a concept of place from the point of view of local observers, from which space has the potential to imply meaning. Notice the contrast between information space as imagined in hypermedia’s infancy and information space as actualized in its maturity. In the former, space is a metaphor for semantic distance between information, independent of that fact. In the latter, the fact of semantic distance between people’s points of view constitutes space.
This highlights a misunderstanding in early concepts of information space beyond interface design. The semantic similarity between any two pieces of information is a function of some interpretant that finds their relations salient. As such, information space exists across a web of interpretants. Hypermedia’s rhetorical task is thereby reconceptualized as a means for the reader to construct maps of salience. The author may want to transmit a particular understanding of the hyperbase to the reader or leave the journey open ended. In either case, the author and reader come together to give the hyperbase an implicit and non-canonical meaning.
Neogeography bears implications for our canons of knowledge in a similarly pluralist fashion to the preceding paragraphs. The authors speak of an opening up of ‘truth’, but it’s more to the point that “power relations have been removed from the freedom to engage in discourse” (Warf and Sui, 2010). In any case, this does set the stage for ‘neighborhoods of truth’ becoming commonplace. When consensus forms bottom-up, schisms and fractures become a normal part of the process, rather than defects from it. Neogeography’s notion of place brings this phenomena into the scope of geographic knowledge.
However, the relational understanding of space is not without its problems. While it posits many potentials for space, one need also account for the boundary conditions that structure space by constraining which potentials are actualized (Jones, 2009). Without considering the forces that govern relationships between objects, relational space runs into the ‘connection problem’, where contingent relations are indistinguishable from necessary ones, “such that all objects are necessarily spatially related” (Jones, 2009). This, while not false, is semantically void. To demonstrate, Peirce (1923) observes that any pair of things, A and B, have the property A-B-ness, and all other things have the property A-B-lessness. Such trivial relations proliferate across all combinations of things, and the only escape into something meaningful is to consider which of Nature’s regularities are of interest to us. That is, we must consider the forces that govern relevant relations to meaningfully structure our understanding (in this instance, of space).
Jones (2009) invokes ‘phase space’ to account for the structural features that lead to the emergence of such networks as relationalists advocate focusing on. Phase space includes all theoretically possible spaces in a spatiotemporal system, where the actual space is understood to be the result of self-organization among an ensemble of things. To contrast the three conceptions of space, consider the concept of a region. In absolute space, a region is an area. In vulgar relational space, it’s a network given whole. In relational space understood by invoking phase space, “regions are historical geographical accomplishments, defined and delimited by shifting relationships” (Jones, 2009). We shall return to this when discussing online knowledge communities.
Turning to the concrete aspects of neogeography, we consider the phenomenon of volunteered geographic information (VGI). VGI describes the contribution of geographic data from (usually) non-expert users on a voluntary basis, such as OpenStreetMap (Goodchild, 2007). Prior to VGI, mapmaking was a top-down process performed by an authoritative source (e.g. the government). But as the internet made a bottom-up approach possible, the government's role shifted to providing standards that enabled communities to provide a patchwork coverage of areas. Since contributions in this patchwork are made without pretense to authority, VGI has also been called asserted geographic information (Goodchild, 2007).
This shift from authority to assertion makes it important to consider the motivations for contributing VGI. While some may simply feel empowered from being a part of the growing patchwork, many contribute information out of an interest in making it available for someone (incidentally making it available to everyone) (Goodchild, 2007). Others use it as a social outlet, such as OpenStreetMap users who participate in mapping parties (Haklay and Weber, 2008). In this way, maps constructed with VGI clarify how relational space is a geographical concept. Relationships between people drive the mapmaking, leading to a place that’s informed by local life.
Information Space and the Wiki Way
The paradigm of neogeography mirrors the wiki concept, where users can edit the wiki’s pages as they wish. Roche et al. (2012) evaluate the concept for WikiGIS, observing that the many-to-many communication of user edits combined with a version history makes wiki knowledge production iterative and non-cumulative. An object will continue to be edited until there are no more disputes about it. This “differentiated consensus”, where understandings converge over time, shifts the foundation of user networks from mere information exchange to knowledge sharing (Roche et al. 2012).
Revisiting the idea of phase space, let’s apply it to information space in the context of a wiki. A wiki’s development is determined by its users, and the networks of their thoughts’ intersections regarding the wiki’s contents constitute the boundary conditions that determine the phase space. Every user has an idea in their mind of the contours that connect meaningful topics. Where those contours overlap and this overlap ripples through them (in contrast with isolated junctions) for many users, there the discussion will most significantly alter the wiki’s development.
A contour is a “perceived pattern of meaning within the hypertext” (Bernstein, 1993) that conveys its structure to a reader. The reader constructs these contours by their actions, revisiting pages which the other pages visited since have given new meanings. Unlike the literalized spatial metaphor in the first section, contours enable us to distinguish between paths that result from exploring the semantic space and those which arise from convenience (e.g. familiar shortcuts). The latter are noise with respect to the space. Early interface designers made this noise, paths as mere paths, the central abstraction in user navigation, hence the navigation problem. The navigation problem mirrors the connection problem here, for failing to consider the contours that govern paths leaves us no choice but to construe every path as necessarily how it is.
It follows that in a richly connected hypertext, there’s no single set of contours that makes up “the” information space. A reader who perceives the space to be altogether unalike from the one the author envisioned isn’t necessarily misunderstanding the hypertext. Multiple interpretations are commonplace even in traditional (linear) texts, but unlike those texts, interpreting hypertext doesn’t depend on following the author’s train of thought. With this in mind, the assertions of author and reader stand on the same level of epistemic authority, throwing into question the reason for keeping to one role in the first place.
Wikis embody that line of questioning carried to its conclusion. Once it’s clear that the original author holds no special office in determining a hypertext’s contours, there’s no reason to prohibit other readers from editing its paths. Tazzoli et al. (2004) point out how allowing anyone to edit gives rise to Communities of Practice. Where a website’s visitors share similar domains of knowledge, Wiki editing gives them a shared practice to coalesce around. They characterize Wikis as “network[s] of inter-connected thoughts” (Tazzoli et al, 2004) and propose integrating semantic web techniques to represent the community’s knowledge in a machine-readable way. Storing semantic metadata about pages could help bridge understanding across Wikis, leading to improved models of knowledge through collaboratively editing the ontologies that ground it.
In this way, semantic Wikis suggest a viable method for indicating information space (with reasonable fidelity) in tangible form. Just as an individual can use a semantic Wiki for explicating the region of information space in their mind, Communities of Practice can use them to understand the region of it in which they reside. The same could be done across Communities of Practice, and so on up the levels of scale. Clearly recognizing the historical development of consensus around a perspective and the relationships that defined it affords a path to truly navigating information space.
Conclusion
I began this review noting how the internet teaches epistemic confidence through play. In broad strokes, we can trace its development through hypermedia’s struggle with the origins of authority in information space. It was necessary to reorient away from space as unchanging and unchallengeable, towards an agency-driven process of narrative building. As designers grew proficient at it, its implications rippled through Web 2.0 and confronted GIS in its understanding of space. Geographers refined the rising concept of a space defined by its relations to one defined by the forces that mediate them, enabling a concrete understanding of, for example, VGI. The democratization of GIS tools decoupled assertion from authority, making assertion the representative of any number of motives within the community. The space’s authority comes by widespread participation in the network, whose assertions converge as it self-organizes.
In the context of Wikis (a mature form of hypermedia), the discourse in GIS clarifies how that process of narrative building can be properly understood as an information space. Though not touched on here, one of the challenges semantic Wikis face is minimizing the formalism required for contributors to edit semantic metadata (Tazzoli et al, 2004). As computer scientists work on the technical end of that problem, the last decade or two of GIS discussions bring important lessons for the human end of it.
Works Cited
Tilton, David W., and SONA KARENTZ ANDREWS. "Space, place and interface." Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization 30.4 (1993): 61-72.
Landow, George P. "The rhetoric of hypermedia: Some rules for authors." Journal of Computing in Higher Education 1 (1989): 39-64.
Caporal, Julien, and Yann Viemont. "Maps as a metaphor in a geographical hypermedia system." Journal of Visual Languages & Computing 8.1 (1997): 3-25.
Laurel, Brenda, Tim Oren, and Abbe Don. "Issues in multimedia interface design: Media integration and interface agents." Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1990.
Warf, Barney, and Daniel Sui. "From GIS to neogeography: ontological implications and theories of truth." Annals of GIS 16.4 (2010): 197-209.
Jones, Martin. "Phase space: geography, relational thinking, and beyond." Progress in human geography 33.4 (2009): 487-506.
Peirce, Charles Sanders. “Chance, Love, and Logic.” The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chance, Love, and Logic, by Charles S. Peirce, 1923, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/65274/65274-h/65274-h.htm.
Goodchild, Michael F. "Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography." GeoJournal 69 (2007): 211-221.
Haklay, Mordechai, and Patrick Weber. "Openstreetmap: User-generated street maps." IEEE Pervasive computing 7.4 (2008): 12-18.
Roche, Stéphane, et al. "Wikigis basic concepts: Web 2.0 for geospatial collaboration." Future Internet 4.1 (2012): 265-284.
Bernstein, Mark, Michael Joyce, and David Levine. "Contours of constructive hypertexts." Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Hypertext. 1993.
Tazzoli, Roberto, Paolo Castagna, and Stefano Emilio Campanini. "Towards a semantic wiki wiki web." 3rd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2004), Hiroshima, Japan. 2004.