History and Purpose of the Doorway

Sometime in 1995 I read a story called "The Originist" in the anthology "Maps in a Mirror" by Orson Scott Card. This story takes place in the Foundation universe created by Isaac Asimov. One of the main characters is an indexer -- someone who works in the indexing room of the Library. Essentially, the indexers spend all day making links between stories, documents, etc. that already exist. These links seem to function like hypertext links do today, and they are chosen by what seems to be free association on the part of the indexer.

Use of the Library's resources through this indexing system leads the other main character of the story to a potentially paradigm-shattering correlation. This is precisely the sort of thing that I love, perhaps the highest goal that I had in mind when creating the Doorway. However, there are other goals as well:

• Teaching people about the amazing wealth of connections that exist, so that perhaps they can go out into the world with more open eyes.
• Many people learn simple (or not so simple) facts or ideas through the types of associations found here that they would never run across any other way.
• If readers begin submitting nodes to me, I am sure I also shall learn many intriguing new things.
• One word: grokking.
• I firmly believe that computers and the Internet need to stay around, for there are directly, personally useful things that can be accomplished through them that could not be accomplished any other way. In particular, I can envisage no way that any linear printed document or other non-interactive medium could achieve what I am trying to with the Doorway.

Judge for yourself. Comments are always welcome.

(Last updated 7/21/96)