What is a Wiki?

Managing Your Brain by Wiki

Databases have been around ever since 1900, when the US Government commissioned a mechanical Census database. The creators of this machine started IBM a few years later. But before the invention of relational databases, Vannevar Bush was proposing something even wilder, something much more freeform: a hypertext database.

"A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory."

"The process of tying two items together is the important thing."
--Vannevar Bush, in "As We May Think", Atlantic Monthly, 1945

Hypertext theory was developed by people who wanted to use it to keep track of their own brains. Ted Nelson, who was inspired by Vannevar Bush's vision of the future, coined the term "hypertext" while trying to build "a note-keeping program for preserving his every thought" (The Daring Proposal The Economist (London), 23 Aug 1986).

The same was true about the creation of the Web, as Tim-Berners-Lee's online biography notes:

"he [Tim Berners-Lee, in 1980] wrote for his own private use his first program for storing information including using random associations. Named "Enquire", and never published, this program formed the conceptual basis for the future development of the World Wide Web."

--Tim Berners-Lee's biography on W3.org

Wikis, which can be thought of as simple interfaces to a hypertext database, work well for keeping track of notes and interlinked information. In fact, I first ran into Wikis while looking for something to help my father take class notes in grad school. He chose to use Notebook, a personal Wiki, to do the job.

Notebook: Personal Hypertext Manager

While not geared toward Web publishing, Notebook is a perfect example of how wiki technology can work well in other settings. Its author describes it as a "personal Website." Notebook was my first wiki, and I suggest you use it to familiarize yourself with the mechanics of creating pages, formatting them, and interlinking them. With Notebook, it's fun to play around with the possibilities of hypertext. Notebook is a serious tool as well; I now use Notebook to keep track of research, ideas, and ToDo lists.

Notebook runs on GNU/Linux, MacOS X, Windows, and any other platform with TCL/TK support. Windows and MacOS X installation is a breeze -- just download the program and run it. On GNU/Linux, things aren't quite as smooth. Since version 1.1, Notebook depends on the Starkit software package, which is not included in most GNU/Linux distributions. Although I had to compile Starkit for GNU/Linux on my iBook, it's much easier to install Starkit's standalone tclKit binary.

When you run Notebook, you will be greeted with an un-editable, blank page. This confused me at first, until I read the documentation. To start using Notebook, you need to select New Notebook from the File menu. A dialog box then prompts you for a filename so it can create your wiki file.

In Notebook, new wikis automatically contain help information and a great tutorial (you can turn this off later in the preferences dialog). After you have created a wiki file, you'll be greeted with Notebook's Home page:

Notebook, a Personal Wiki

Notebook's tour feature gives an excellent interactive tutorial on how to use a wiki. It describes many of Notebook's features in detail and guides you through using Notebook effectively.

Notebook works much like a Web browser, with a few nice features. To follow a link, just click it. If you want to see what pages link to the page you're on, click on the title. The "cycle" feature on Notebook works as the opposite of "back". It lets you jump back to the home page and cycle through, following the exact path you used to get to the page from which you clicked "cycle." If you want to edit a page at any time, just click the "Edit" button, and Notebook will bring up an editable text box of the page's contents.

As with all wikis, the formatting rules are easier than most HTML, letting you focus on your primary task: content creation. Unlike most wikis, Notebook does borrow some ideas from HTML. Bold, italics, underline, and strike-through are marked with the HTML-like tags <b>, <i>, <u>, and <x>.

The rest of Notebook's formatting system keeps closely to the rest of the wikis.