Here's how some new dimensions can make personal record-keeping easier. Let me show you a nice example, designed by Marlene Mallicoat. We've made a column in Dimension 2 called SCHEDULE (We've also made some others, which we'll get to.) And we've typed in some cells to show the days of the month and their days of the week. As we move the cursor down the column of the individual days, it appears to be an ordinary table. Go down using the 'c' key until you get to 'April 14'. But this is no ordinary table, because it can open up as we move the cursor. When we move the cursor to the right, Tuesday's schedule appears. Move the cursor one step to the right using the 'f' key. This sudden change of scene can be a little startling, but that's one of the interesting aspects of the system. Each cell's connections are independent, and can be arranged into weavings that aren't visible till you get there. (There's much more to say about this, but no room to do it here.) Let's step the cursor to see the details of the conference call mentioned on the screen. We step the cursor down and to the right, onto 'Conf.call.' More cells open up below, showing the names of the people I'm planning to talk to in this conference call. Now we move the cursor down to 'Engelbart, D'. Consider the conference call that's on the schedule-- where shall we put the telephone numbers that we need? In most conventional systems, we'd have a separate database module that other programs would refer to. But here, instead, we can connect each item directly to the relevant information item. This is where the idea of 'multiple dimensions' comes in. We simply rotate the x axis into the contact-info dimension Press the 'x' key once to project the 'contact-info' dimension onto the x axis. Now here's another example. How shall we keep track of expenses? For instance, where shall we take note of the cost of the conference call? Let's go to the cell for the conference call and rotate the x-axis into the money dimension. That's where we have chosen to put the record of the cost of the conference call. Press the 'e' key once and then press 'x' once to change to the 'money' dimension. Where should we keep our other expenses for the day? Why, they too can be of course connected on the money dimension to the events whose cost they record. Just step to the right. Press the 'f' key once. We see the other expenses right there connected to the cost of the telephone call-- along dimension 2 (d.2). Now notice that the summation of the expenses (we've kept it simple-- just two items, for clarity--) is also along dimension 2. Remember that all these dimensions are independent, so that any two dimensions can be seen at right angles to each other. So dimension 2 won't change as we rotate the x-axis back from d.money to d.1. Press the 'x' key twice to rotate the '1' dimension back to the x axis. Well, look at that! As we rotated the x-axis back to dimension 1, dimension 2 (as shown on the y-axis) stayed the same, with the column of figures remaining visible and unchanged. The view of the expenses on d.2 did not change because we were only changing the x-axis. Not only that, but we've returned to where we started. And when the x-axis finally showed d.1, the EXPENSES heading is-- guess where? Right in the same row on d.1 as the SCHEDULE heading, back in the top row, where this adventure began. We've stepped the cursor up to the top row, where we started. If we were to move the cursor to the left, to the cell saying SCHEDULE, we could start back down and around again. April 10 April 11 April 12 April 13 April 14 April 15 Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday 10am 12 noon 6pm Conference call lunch dinner Engelbart, Douglas Hall, Wendy 415-332-9078 00 44 23 8059 2388 $37.54 $68.90 ------- $106.44