cyberneticen, conversation theory. similar thoughts on hyptertext as ted nelson

1928 - 1996 soldered machines into behaving like learning organisms, and developed a comprehensive theory of human cognition ...

... he specified a (still unused) logic for representing individual knowledge in a global repository. Conversation Theory, of which he was primary driver and author, defines the conditions required for agreement and delineates an architecture in which understanding can occur. He warned about confusing mere "communication" (exchanging messages containing what is already known) with "conversation" (a generative activity that gives identity to participants and leads to what is new). Pask's was a prolific voice in the development of "second-order" cybernetics, where the subjectivity of the observer is a critical element in the describing processes of science. He was serious about making "a theory of everything." Although he mirrored the structure of great scientific theories, his content was unique; for example, insisting that what is conserved in conversation is consciousness - that which is shared among the participants. To put it another way, nothing that has ever been thought is fully lost.

or put it still into another way: meme (again and again and again.oh well)

didn´t know <gordon pask>:

It was Gordon Pask who inspired the construction of an <information> management system that had all the components of modern Web browsers, but with the added good sense to provide an organising principle for the hyperlinks – something the World Wide Web still needs. Named after Pask's first implementation, this THOUGHTSTICKER system was built in 1985, some 10 years before the Web's acceptance.

background and a lot of theory: on conversation and conversation software.

In the 1970s, THOUGHTSTICKER was developed at Pask's laboratory as an extension of Pask's studies of the 1950s and 1960s in human learning and individual conceptual style. These studies culminated in a comprehensive approach to educational technology (the CASTE system) ...

The term THOUGHTSTICKER was coined by Pask to mark the maturation of a general approach to knowledge representation whose elements reflected cognitive structures.