Electronically presented materials can be more effectively interrelated with one another.

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With paper publishing, if seven logical points are asserted in an article, and someone wants to take issue with points two and five, the only way to do so is to bundle the two objections into an overall reply to the whole article--resulting in a sloppy kind of match between one overall piece of writing and another.

The new techniques of electronic publishing enable a much more logically accurate fit.  With the new techniques, each of the seven points is presented as a separate “chunk,” and any challenge can be made at this more specific level.

This can also be done without interrupting the flow of the original exposition.  All that is required is a button at the bottom of the page, which the reader can click to see “Related External Items.”

These related items can also do more than just refute the assertion made in the original item.   They can corroborate it, refine it, imply it, be implied by it--the list goes on.   (Click the button at the bottom of this page for a few examples.)

All told, there seem to be about ten standardized types of interrelationships that effectively cover the logical possibilities of how assertions can interrelate with one another.  They appear to be useable even at the level of formal mathematical proofs.

© COPYRIGHT 2004 ROBERT WINTER.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.