One more blow against linearity.
As comfortable as I may have become at integrating hypertext into my writing, I still relate to the main column as the trunk from which other, peripheral, tangents branch out. Yet time and again I discover that that's really not the case. Often the development of certain ideas in the linked branches is more to the point than the main trunk which becomes, instead of the skeleton, little more than the glue that holds everything together.
If I'm lucky the structure actually reflects the content. Instead of links because "hey, I haven't stuck a link into this paragraph yet", or because the footnote starts to dominate the text, the thoughts developed in the links become (again, I hope) not only an integral part of the main idea, but an expression of it.
Of course when it comes to spring cleaning, or at least to my version of it, we're dealing less with glue than simply with a box into which everything gets thrown so that it won't get in the way when you go through the motions of cleaning. And having that box available makes it possible to pull out an old copy of a magazine and use it as a lens in order to reflect on how we use these tools. And perhaps even work it all up into a column.
Go to: Reflections of a Spring Cleaner.