Editing Intertwingularity

{{Short description|Coined term by Ted Nelson in 1974}}
'''Intertwingularity''' is a term coined by [[Ted Nelson]] to express the complexity of interrelations in human [[knowledge]].

Nelson wrote in ''[[Computer Lib/Dream Machines]]'' {{Harv|Nelson|1974|p=DM45}}: "EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED. In an important sense there are no "[[subject (documents)|subject]]s" at all; there is only all knowledge, since the cross-connections among the myriad topics of this world simply cannot be divided up neatly."<ref>{{Citation|last=Nelson|first=Theodor|author-link=Ted Nelson|title=[[Computer Lib]]: You can and must understand computers now/Dream Machines: New freedoms through computer screens&mdash;a minority report|publisher=the distributors|year=1974|location=South Bend, IN|edition=1st|isbn=0-89347-002-3}}</ref>

He added the following comment in the revised edition {{Harv|Nelson|1987|p=DM31}}: "Hierarchical and sequential structures, especially popular since Gutenberg, are usually forced and artificial. Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged—people keep pretending they can make things [[hierarchical]], [[categorization|categorizable]] and [[sequential]] when they can't."<ref>{{Citation|last=Nelson|first=Theodor|author-link=Ted Nelson|title=[[Computer Lib/Dream Machines]]|publisher=Tempus Books of Microsoft Press|year=1987|location=Redmond, WA|edition=Rev.|isbn=0-914845-49-7}}</ref>

Intertwingularity is related to Nelson's coined term [[hypertext]], partially inspired by "[[As We May Think]]" (1945) by [[Vannevar Bush]].<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/06/famously-late|title=A Kubla Khan-do attitude|last=F.|first=G.|date=June 17, 2014|newspaper=The Economist|access-date=August 15, 2015}}</ref>

==Influence==
[[Peter Morville]], an influential figure in [[information architecture]], discusses intertwingularity in some of his books. In ''Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become'' (2005), Morville uses the concept of intertwingularity to describe the experience of using hypertext on the web and starting to use computers embedded in everyday objects, known as [[ubiquitous computing]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xJNLJXXbhusC&q=intertwingularity&pg=PA64|publisher=[[O'Reilly Media]]|date=2005-09-26|isbn=9780596553012|language=en|first=Peter|last=Morville|pages=64–65}}</ref> In 2014, he published a book called ''Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything'' about the intertwingularity of the universe, crediting Nelson with the word.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Intertwingled|url=http://intertwingled.org/|website=Intertwingled|access-date=2015-08-12|last=Morville|first=Peter}}</ref>

[[David Weinberger]] wrote about intertwingularity in ''[[Everything Is Miscellaneous|Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder]]'' in 2008, explaining that providing unique identifiers for items helps enable intertwingularity.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KDDwp8zXCQMC&q=intertwingularity&pg=PA125|publisher=Macmillan|date=2008-04-29|isbn=9780805088113|language=en|first=David|last=Weinberger|pages=125–128|access-date=2015-08-11}}</ref>

The concept of intertwingularity was celebrated at the "Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson" conference on April 14, 2014, at [[Chapman University]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/douglas-dechow/intertwingled-the-work-and-influence-of-ted-nelson_b_5162960.html|website=The Huffington Post|access-date=2015-08-12|last=Dechow|first=Douglas|date=2014-04-18}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson|url=http://www.chapman.edu/events/intertwingled/|website=Chapman University|access-date=2015-08-12}}</ref> The organizers published a book called ''Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson'' in 2015, with articles about Nelson's work and legacy.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson|url=https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319169248|publisher=Springer|access-date=2015-08-11}}</ref> One of the organizers of the conference and editors of the book, Douglas Dechow, said, "In the 1960s, he saw a world of networked, interlinked – intertwingled, if you will – documents where all of the world’s knowledge is able to interact and intermingle [...] He was the first, or among the first, people to have that idea."<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.ocregister.com/articles/nelson-611446-web-world.html|title='Intertwingled' at Chapman muses on how Web could have been|last=Hamilton|first=Ian|date=April 25, 2014|work=The Orange County Register|access-date=August 15, 2015}}</ref>

==See also==
*[[Connectedness]]
*[[Directed graph]]
*[[Gunk (mereology)]]
*[[Multicategory]]
*[[Multiclass classification]], [[Multicriteria classification]], [[Multi-label classification]]
*[[Multigraph]]
*[[Multiple inheritance]]
*[[Polysemy]]
*[[Rhizome (philosophy)]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{Wiktionary|intertwingularity|intertwingle}}

*[https://www-archive.mozilla.org/blue-sky/misc/199805/intertwingle.html blue sky: miscellaneous] by [[Jamie Zawinski]]
*[http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/ Intertwingly] - [[Sam Ruby]]'s [[blog]] named for this concept

[[Category:Knowledge]]
[[Category:Mereology]]
[[Category:Ted Nelson]]

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