Zip Editor [Transcription of Video]
Nelson: In today's terms, we are now talking about transparallel media. Meaning, things which are side by side and explicitly connected. So for example, it refers to pictures with captions that have arrows that point directly to the part of the pictures. It includes anything where there are explicit connections. Parallel media is just when you see anything side by side, like in an illustration. So here, I am demonstrating transparallel media with transclusion only. We're leaving out links, because I want to stress the notion of transclusion as the counterpart of links. Links and transclusion are like left and right hands. Links are the connections made between things which are different. Transclusions are system maintained connections between instances which are the same in different contexts. To me, transclusion has always been the heart of electronic media, and I think eventually people will understand this. So, here we are talking about transparallel media with transvisibility, meaning things seen side by side where you can see the explicit connections. These objects are called Zips, which what they do is track the connections. In this case, I am only tracking the transcluded connections between objects. So, the same paragraph appears in more than one place, there remains a line showing the transclusion.One example of this use of this is in history. History is a vast complex of millions of stories. Obviously, we can't understand millions of stories, but there are millions of stories, and the deeper you understand it, the more different stories you see and the more ways you can place different stories in context. So the idea I've always had for historical writing is transparallel presentation of separate stories with explicit connections between them. Not today's hypertext, which is like jumping off a cliff into the darkness, but rather, seeing the stories side by side and seeing the connections, links and transclusions between their parts.