Information spaces created using Dynasites are similar to threaded discussions and electronic conferencing systems in that they allow users to communicate directly and by doing so evolve a shared information space. Dynasites information spaces differ from threaded discussions in that they support the collaborative creation and evolution of artifacts through which communication can take place, rather than supporting communication as an end in itself.
Dynasites is intended to be used by webmasters (those who know about the web as a technology), in collaboration with users (those who use the web as a medium, but who may not understand the technology), to create an information space seed (a collection of information that is intended to evolve). This initial seed is then evolved directly by the user community without requiring technical knowledge of the web and without requiring a webmaster to serve as an intermediary.
Each of the individual dynasites linked to from this page, as well as the underlying DynaSites Substrate, are part of an research agenda aiming to transform the web from a broadcast medium (in which there are few producers and many consumers of information) to a knowledge construction medium (in which a community of users create, share, use, improve, and combine computational artifacts). This metaphor of collaborative knowledge construction is part of a larger vision of computational support for communities of practice.
Most sites on web today are implemented as HTML files which are displayed in a web browser, such as Netscape Navigator. This model is well-suited for announcing information over the web. However, evolvable web-based information spaces are difficult to implement because they require that the source files are modified by users. Not only does this require HTML knowledge and access to the source files, but it also poses security risks from trouble makers as well as from users who might inadvertently alter important information.
Dynasites implements a different model of web based information spaces. Rather than storing information in files, Dynasites stores information content and hypertext links as small pieces in a database. Pieces from the database are then put together by a program to create HTML pages. This model provides new possibilities for users to evolve the information they see in their browser. Users can add to the information space using forms that require no HTML knowledge.
See Related Approaches for more information about the DynaSites approach.
Implementation
Dynasites is implemented with the Frontier environment. Frontier provides a database, a scripting language, and many nice tools for building dynamic websites.
Dynasites uses the CGI interface to communicate with the webserver. Dynasites documents push the CGI scripting paradigm to create dynamic page elements such as collapsable hierarchies, and richly annotated and interlinked documents.
