Leaving "Space" for "Humans"

Currently, whether we are talking about metaphors of windows, desktops bookshelves, or Myst-ic worlds, spatial metaphors dominate computer texts. The metaphors we use, of course, shape our perception of the world they are applied to. When Doug Englelbart of Xerox PARC originally conceived of windows in the 1960s, it was a vivid and meaningful metaphor and not a brand name. Those of us old enough to remember when we had to wait and wait while a program ran from second memory will recall the miracle sensation of the three dimensional space that allowed us to actually look through one screen of work into another without having to strike an endless series of keystrokes to open and close files one at a time. That metaphor shift into a spatial world with depth was revolutionary.

Jay David Bolter, of course, describes hypertext as a writing space complete with its own geography and architecture. These metaphors are essential to help students move away from the linear world of traditional writing and move to understand composing in hypertext. However, the usefulness of the spatial metaphor may be limited. Over the last few years and in the hands of overzealous enthusiasts, Steven Johnson argues that spatial and architectural metaphors have become something of an albatross as “the good faith of user-friendly metaphors [were] replaced by the hysteria of total simulation” (60).

In fact, selecting and maintaining an appropriate metaphor is as difficult for the novice author in a hypertext project as it is in a poem or any other constructed and extended analogy. A student will begin constructing a web site with a café metaphor but abandon it (intentionally or unintentionally) as it becomes either too restrictive or too overwhelming. Spatial metaphors often work more effectively for preliminary interfaces than for content sections. For example, while it may work well for a user studying literature to be presented with a “library” inviting them to enter different “wings” that focus on different genres, time periods, or cultures, continuing that metaphor down to the stacks, bookshelves, and checkout desks can be cumbersome and feel artificial.

We don’t have to look much further than the interfaces of some of the major search engines to understand the limitations of the spatial metaphor in an ever-expanding digital environment. All too quickly, designers run out of places to put things. Upon calling up Yahoo or the AOL homepage, the user faces a barrage of potential paths to wander. Finding specific information by looking in these spaces can take an incredible amount of time – so much time, in fact, that many users abandon the spatial paths altogether. FAST Search’s interface contains only a search box and the opportunity to select by specific file type. Instead of looking through space, users ask for what they want, and if they speak Boolean correctly, they can even get it. 

As we move closer to Kurzweil’s intelligent and spiritual machine, spatial metaphors may give way to more human ones, like AskJeeves’ search engine which employs a butler metaphor. AskJeeves, of course, is not the best search engine currently in cyberspace, but it is worth noting because it approaches the idea of a search in a way that is unique from other engines and may serve as a prototype of what is to come, both for search engines and for the role of authors in hypertext. While the spatial metaphor allows users to move from set text to set text, the human metaphor requires that the media have the ability to compose. This means that – instead locating screens filled with paragraphs on a path and directing the user to come to them – the machine will need a vocabulary to draw from and a “grammar” of executable rules so that it can structure unique responses. Should this change come about, it would effectively mark the beginning of functional artificial intelligence and change writing for hypertext in ways that we can only begin to foresee; however, the change is likely to evolve so gradually, even at the accelerated pace of technological advances, that we find it difficult to say where or when it began.