GridLines

Traditional print media is quite limiting. Books, newspapers & magazines are fairly limited in how they can present information, and very limited in how the reader can interact with that information.

In transitioning to the on-line world, print publications have largely kept these limitations. Explicit attempts to break free of these self-imposed boundaries (Such as the much-vaunted New York Times "Snowfall" feature) are largely exercises in distraction: The addition of animation and visual effects to a linear, long-form narrative is hardly going to revolutionise the way that we consume media; The accordances are still the same; the communication is still one-way; and the journey through the story is still linear.

The web itself, with it's promise of a non-linear, branching navigation style, was a powerful, exciting and revolutionary concept when it was first introduced ... but what has happened to that revolution? Where has all the excitement gone?

Ultimately, we were let down by our brains: We are simply not quick enough to digest and process information that branches and expands exponentially, and we lack sufficient short term memory to combine it all into a coherent whole. In recognising these fundamental biological limitations, we have fallen back on traditional, linear storytelling, but have we fallen too far back?

There may be a half-way house. What if we could come up with a way of presenting information that goes beyond linear narrative, but is more restrained than a full-blown exponentially branching tree of possibilities? This is not a new idea. Some comment systems limited the depth of threads to preserve the navigability of the conversation as a whole -- and this works, by and large.

Many years ago, I envisioned a print newspaper that presented stories as arguments; editorials for two competing points of view presented on opposite pages of a double-page spread. More recently, the same thought recurred to me while looking at how Google+ lays out it's stream of articles, multiple tall, thin columns of text ("cards") arranged across the page.

I wonder if there could be mileage in combining these concepts - something that goes beyond a linear narrative, yet something that remains constrained to a two dimensional page; a branching, non-linear debate, but with strong limitations on the amount of branching that is possible; and the length of each point/post; a discussion forum and a venue for debate that restricts and guides commentators for the benefit and convenience of the reader. A medium within which text retains it's primacy, but that introduces (restrained) graphical and diagrammatic elements to assist in navigation; and to provide reference points for the reader.

I think that this would be a really interesting experiment to do.