The Way Hypertext Spoze to Be
By Mike Swaine
What say we pause a moment in this headlong rush, stop on this plateau we have attained in our mastery of the Protocols of the Elders of CERN and smell the roses -- or the coffee, if you prefer. We might even savor that aroma of seared flesh wafting usward just now from that Japanese-monster-movie clash going on over yonder.
Mozilla vs. Microsaurus sounds epic, doesn't it? But somehow the spectacle of two behemoths dancing around a folding chair called the Web-browser market disappoints the cinephile with tastes honed on the seminal works of Inoshiro Honda. Musical chairs just doesn't have the cinematic oomph of torching a city with your fiery breath, and besides, isn't the de facto price point for Web browsers zero? Some market. Some battle. Moreover, aren't Web browsers as we now know them as doomed to extinction as Mothra and her brood? While we pause here nosing the air, shall we agree that there'd better be something more over that next ridge than bigger and better HTML tags?
The World Wide Web is a wonderful thing, but it's not the long-awaited universal hypertext. Which is exactly what whatever's beyond that next ridge should be a lot closer to being, because most of the shortcomings of the Web would come up less short if the Web were closer to that hypertext vision.
Ah, the vision; that's it over there: that unfinished structure under the giant eternal flaming X (www.aus.x
