Self-assembling hypertexts, weblogs, and wikis

ABSTRACT

Although most theory and research in the hypertext community has been directed toward systems and implementations with fairly conventional patterns of authorship, hypertext as it has evolved on the Internet contains a number of stranger species: Web logs (or "blogs") that consist largely of citations or pointers to other Web content; reader-writeable text spaces sometimes called "Wikis"; and in spaces outside the Web, shared writing environments like MUDs and MOOs. This panel brings together several writer/designers who have experience in one or more of these areas. The panelists will consider how open-form and self-assembling texts fit and stretch the hypertext paradigm, and what contribution these writing practices might make to the future of writing on the Net.