This discussion brings to mind a program Apple shipped with the early Macintosh (I believe, in 1987) called HyperCard. I haven't heard much about Hypercard for many years, but I have thought about it periodically as I learn more about these new programs. It seems to me that the potential of Hypercard, which I hadn't really thought of at the time, is being realized in programs such as Obsidian, Roam, and others. I use Dynalist a lot, and am seriously considering Obsidian.

Daly

bartb wrote:

"The question that fascinates me about all this “new”
interest is “why now—what changed”. " .... Exactly!
IMHO: think one indicator is the sheer volume of data people want to
track and research is growing too fast for the current toolsets to keep
up.

Paul Korm wrote:
The technology of Roam or Obsidian is not new -- the developers are
>using existing off the shelf components. What's "new" is that the
>business of linking "notes" (or something more granular within a note)
>is bringing broader awareness of the uses of hypertext theory and
>information theory dating back decades.
>
>The question that fascinates me about all this "new" interest is "why
>now -- what changed". Obsidian or Roam could have been written a
>decade or more ago. And if then, they probably didn't generate much
>interest. (How many people bought Storyspace when it was first
>published 33 years ago -- Storyspace then, and now, has the same goal
as
>these new toys.)
>
>I read in Obsidian's forums very detailed posts about ZKs, PKMs, and
>MOCs, and PARA and blah blah. Underlying the efforts behind these
>trends seems to be a general feeling of being overwhelmed by
>"information" (or data, really -- it's just data) and trying to make
>connections between "everything I think about .. everything I read ...
>everything I worry about". It's seductive.
>
>