This study did not begin as "native hypertext." The audience I wanted to reach by the book would not be too familiar with hypertext, and the book could circulate more widely, at least in the near future.
This project began as scattered notes collected after I had written a book on architecture and postmodernism, and a hypertext on non-linear presentations of philosophy and argument. Those notes attempted, once again, to approach the question of how we combine tradition and modernity. The project became more focused through ideas stimulated by invitations to address several Danish and Swedish groups. A sabbatical year provided the time to collect the by then voluminous notes, write, and travel with a laptop and camera.
The notes that led to this writing project were initially stored in Storyspace hypertext files. As the project grew I adapted some of them into the book text, eliminated a great many, and left others for this hypertext. After a time where they grew in parallel, I put the hypertext aside and wrote the book. When I returned to the hypertext I found that the book's voice and continuity was difficult to bring into the hypertext in any other way than in the form I called a "pyramid outline." Then I began adding other materials and changing the overall organization so that the pyramid was only a portion of the text.
(c) David Kolb, 1 August 2001