This volume tells the story of the Microcosm hypermedia research and development project that started in the late 1980s and from which has emerged a philosophy that re-examines the whole concept of hypermedia and its role in the evolution of multimedia information systems. The book presents the complete story of Microcosm to date. It sets the development of Microcosm in the context of the history of the subject from which it evolved, as well as the developments in the wider world of technology over the last two decades, including personal computing, high-speed communications and the growth of the Internet. These all lead towards a world of global integrated information environments: the publishing revolution of the 20th century, in principle making vast amounts of information available to anybody anywhere in the world. This book explains the role that open hypermedia systems and link services will play in the integrated information environments of the future.
It considers issues such as authoring, legacy systems and data integrity issues, and looks beyond the simple hypertext model provided in the World Wide Web and other systems today to the world of intelligent information-processing agents that will help us deal with the problems of information overload and maintenance. This volume aims to help all those who are involved in designing, implementing and maintaining hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web by setting the groundwork for producing a system that is both easy to use and easy to maintain.