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hypertxt
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FILE80
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1988-02-01
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What are the immediate business opportunities in hypertext?
===========================================================
If hypertext can deliver desired knowledge with a minimum of keystrokes
regardless of the levels of user understanding, many information users may
shift to this technology. <FILE29 TYPES OF INFORMATION>
Why will they shift to hypertext? Because quick, easy access to desired
knowledge is better than databases, expert systems, microfiche, books,
libraries, or specialists. However, that's the future! What about today?
Immediate business opportunities in hypertext center on four concepts:
substitution, captive, entrepreneurial, and contract hypertext. Let's
consider each in turn. <FILE43 EXAMPLES>
Substitution Opportunities
==========================
If you provide information to others -- newsletters, news, reports, manuals,
rulings, directories, summaries -- you can initially offer information in
both paper/ink and disk/bytes formats.
The putting such information in hypertext formats may be costly, but cumulative
indexes, update speed, access speed, information filtering, or integrating
relationships all offer benefits to your customers.
If you already own copyrighted material, the information creation costs are
already sunk. Distribution of the same information in hypertext formats may
expand current markets or open significant new markets unsuited for
paper/inks formats.
If you plan to put existing print information into hypertext formats,
remember this. Computer screens lack the layout and design possibilities of
ink on paper. But, because screens offer animation, branching, and linking
possibilities, radically different surface and subconscious communication
possibilities exist in each media. Learn or know the differences . . . or
experiment to uncover the principles of effective presentations of text and
design on screens.
Captive Opportunities <FILE51 TOLL POSITIONS>
=====================
If you dispense information within an organization -- training, teaching,
supervising, answering, referencing, or standardizing -- you have a captive
market for hypertext.
Each of these processes involve the transmission of information or knowledge.
The reason for putting such information in hypertext format may center on speed,
cost of personnel, or building a knowledge collective. However, here's the
serious philosophical question hypertext raises.
Hypertext formats can convert information from specialty goods to commodity
goods. If hypertext does work, it can levelize abilities within an industry. If
beginners and experts dispense the same advice, the specialty prices for
information will go only to those whose talents go beyond hypertext (e.g.,
hand-holding, style, confidence, or superior insights).
While you can laugh at the Luddites (people against the introduction of power
looms in England), we've already encountered the same reaction to a hypertext
system we built. In one industry, our system simply minimized vast differences
in pay and experience. With beginners dispensing the same advice as
the experts, the entire compensation structure became threatened.
I leave that for you to consider -- equality in abilities to deliver
information should imply equality in compensation. Using hypertext
capabilities in organizations with varying pay scales might be much harder
than building the hypertext system itself.
New Opportunities
=================
Another approach to hypertext is entrepreneurial in which you use hypertext to
organize and sell new forms of information.
For example, we've learned of a firm that sells quantities of 5-1/4 inch
disks at $1,000 each per month, with buyers lined up for purchase. What's on
the disk?
The firm organizes all available co-op advertising money from all manufacturers
and distributes nationwide into categories for each type of retail store. The
buyers of the disks are newspaper advertising salesmen. These disks
greatly expand their ability to sell advertising space to retailers since
much of the cost is paid by manufacturers.
The value of information lies in how it is organized . . . and not in the cost
of the disk. While hypertext can organize information in ways that make it
invaluable to users (speed or convenience), if the information simply isn't
available in any other format, you've created an information gold mine. As
such, you deserve and can earn premium prices for your efforts far in excess
of the product cost or time saved.
Contract Opportunities
======================
Another type of hypertext opportunity lies in creating hypertext systems for
others.
If you are experienced with the tools for creating hypertext such as word
processors, outliners, and network manipulators; simply build a sample
hypertext system and use it as a resume to build hypertext systems for
others.
Many firms have corporate minutes, policy manuals, or product specifications
that hypertext formats would improve. Alternately, particularly in legal
conflicts where the possession of superior information management typically
wins, talents for organizing and integrating all relevant detail with
finger-tip access are invaluable. Both of these businesses offer exciting
opportunities for people demonstrating talents for rapidly building hypertext
systems.
Analyzing Hypertext Opportunities
=================================
Beyond these four immediate business opportunities for hypertext, you might
consider this.
. What information do you have that people will pay $200-$300 a year for?
. What information goes out of date almost instantly, but needs to be
indexed?
. What paper/ink information do people touch every day?
. What are the types of problems created by paper/ink information
formats?
I think that while hypertext skills are currently an excellent cottage
industry (single crafts-person, low cost tools, easy production), in the
future, hypertext may be more important than the current software market.
Here's why.
Today's disks mostly contain programs for processing (i.e., do something
faster). That's due to the concept of programming, which is essentially
organizing sequences of small operations into larger and hopefully useful
operations. The only knowledge contained on the disk is the skill of the
programmer.
However, with hypertext you can put knowledge of any field (not just
programming) on a disk. The market for desired information is much larger
than the market for processes. With some 70 percent of the workers in the U.S.
somehow involved in dispensing information, systems that serve that market
may be much more important than systems for faster processing of letters or
numbers.
Given the competitive pressures and the rate of changes in software, in ten
years there won't be software empires based on word processing, spreadsheets,
or databases. After all, what was a corner on the buggy-whip market worth
after the introduction of the automobile?
If today's book publishers can't corner all for literary authors,
future software companies won't be able to control markets for knowledge
authors. For that reason, experienced knowledge authors will have a bright
future with earning potentials not based on one-shot entertainment values
but on repeated use (like movie/TV residuals).
How do you become a knowledge author?
=====================================
You do it by building knowledge systems:
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ - by learning the tools <FILE64 SOFTWARE> │
│ - by learning the techniques <FILE30 HOW TO GUIDE> │
│ - by learning the current markets <FILE43 MARKETS> │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The current best-selling author, Stephen King says, "If you write an hour a
day, in ten years you'll be a good author." With hypertext, if you can
build a good system a month, in a year you'll be among the best.
If you follow the literature of systems built and tools used, I think you'll
find mostly hacker and spaghetti hypertext systems built at epic effort.
The fault is not with the authors but rather the tools used.
To sing our own praises, we've built and delivered several multi-megabyte
hypertext systems on contract. The software tools we use -- splitter,
markers, checkers, classifiers, tree builders, verifiers -- are fundamental to
our efforts.
As we find no mention of such programs in the common hypertext literature or by
other companies, we can only conclude that the field is very new and, as such,
the opportunities are unlimited if you can put your knowledge on a disk.
Neil Larson 1/14/88 FILE80
Copyright MaxThink 1988 -- Call 415-428-0104 for permission to reprint