Rationale

What

The ultimate goal of this research is to design a universal information system, featuring a formal but easy-to-use structured hypermedia environment, which is synthesized from a capable data model founded on a novel semantic notation. In this idealized system, any user can author standardized hypermedia objects and optionally transact them on the network, having full control of the information at every step of the process. This system has a native persistence layer and functions as highly malleable personal object database.

Why

The standard information authoring tools and formats available for the general population are legacy. Practically speaking, there’s no established software suite that enables non-technical computer users to author web-ready, responsive hypermedia documents. This severely hinders the sovereignty and self-expression capabilities of non-technical computer users, who must resort to private platforms to have an online presence, thus sacrificing much of their privacy and control over their data in the process. A scenario which I attribute to a shortcoming in the design of web browsers, which were not made to also be hypermedia authoring tools.

HTML, the underlying language that powers the Web, is a complex format that is difficult to write and develop a friendly and accessible editor for. The format provides powerful information encoding features and, through browser engines, even more powerful presentation capabilities. However, the format lacks a high-level model for the systemic organization and structuring of information. Hence, its capabilities are not transferred to upper layers, and it is confined to being a machine-level compilation target.

One of the many observable consequence is that, beyond the very basics, there is no standard interaction model for content on the Web; thus, every website is an ad-hoc implementation of non-standardized UI and UX principles. The lack of ontologies for web content is another sign of the shortcomings of the current design. Everything is treated as a “Website,” a weak and ambiguous concept that lacks epistemological granularity beyond the technical domain. This is even contrary to what was envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee, who expected linked information to be compartmentalized semantically.

In effect, the Web has become one of the most gatekept domains in the history of information. Many can talk and write, but very few can do so on the web in their own terms. While this gatekeeping allows for fortunes to be made by intermediaries, it is also a critical limitation for progress. People have been working very hard to reverse that trend, and I am merely one among them.

My take on the problem is that it’s too hard and too slow to obtain a fix through incremental improvement, as the poor foundation and high complexity of the base architectural layers of information on the web poison and eventually swallow attempts at solutions. I believe that a new upper layer has to be created by merging the current technological advancements with a totally revamped design paradigm.

It is always harder to foresee the future of a creation. The pioneers in this field were, of course, limited by the knowledge available to them. Today, however, we have a better understanding of the role of computers and digital information in global society. We know quite well how it can do both good and harm, its uses and non-uses. This vantage point has created a unique opportunity in history to rethink established conceptions.

How

The core discipline leveraged in this research is information design. While engineering is certainly involved, at least in the current state of development, it appears as a secondary matter. The problems being tackled are not technological problems, but design problems within a technological field, hence design is the leading discipline.

Naturally, the research involves numerous cycles of (1) observation, (2) hypothesis, (3) prototyping, and (4) validation. I began these cycles around 2015, but much of the work done back then revolved around meta-problems, meaning they were primarily focused on defining and understanding the problem itself. It was only around 2018 that I began to formulate the first non-meta hypotheses and prototypes. As of late 2023, I was able to settle on a foundational design, which I am using to materialize the system itself. The cycles continue the same, but now they are less theoretical, touching real-world scenarios.

My research process is very messy and non-linear. Throughout its course, I went back and forth, and sideways more times than I would like to admit. In any case, the principles eventually became clear. They are:

1. A paradigmatic model must be devised from universal qualities of natural language – to afford high didactic models;
2. Those qualities must be factored into a sound logical model – to be amenable to efficient engineering;
3. The logical model must afford the design of a coherent interface model – to limit the complexity of upper layers;
4. The interface model must have a natural representation in each medium relevant to the problem – to afford cross-functionality;
5. The system must be manifested from the harmonic operational composition between each representation – to achieve tight integratation;

Since a design based on these principles spans multiple levels of abstractions throughout multiple domain, I consider the category of the foundational solution, pertaining to principles 1 to 4, as being a Higher-Order Notation. The design of this notation is what I will publish on this website. “Unit” is then the codename of the notation which embodies, simultaneously, (1) a paradigmatic model, (2) a logical model, (3) an interface model, and (4) multiple representation formats. The notation is remarkably simple, but designing it took many years, since the scope of the notation is broad and a single flaw or inefficiency within one of its layers required the rethinking of every other layer. To achieve maximal simplicity, I chose the path of self-similarity, so complexes expressed by the notation could be materialized by a composition of primitive and similar forms.