From Makkuni R., "Living Documents for Knowledge Capture and Learning," Xerox-PARC report, 1999.

The invention of the GUI couple of decades ago revolutionized the way in which people interacted with computing media. The GUI created the desktop computer paradigm, and in turn, the present form a learning system: the learner interacts with a digital document presented on a workstation through the hardware forms of television monitor, keyboard and mice, and the software form of button pushing, windows and point and click.

With time, this form stabilized, and, increases in speed improved the expressive capabilities of digital documents. Digital documents
began as text-centric documents, and later transformed from text to picture documents, and ultimately from pictures to multimedia. The improvements in document forms were mirrored in richer presentations of content, i.e., in the ability of documents to capture
and disseminate knowledge.

However as impressive as the present form
of the display technology and the speeds of information transfer are, important aspects relating to the physical dimensions of Man have been ignored by the modern document. The workstation disembodied the learner. Presentations become screen centric. The workstation becomes the focus of people's offices and homes. While the presentations
on the screens are animated and rich,
the learner's body is typically static. Interpretations become reduced to button pushing, ignoring the expressive potential
of the human hands. The rich space of the sense of touch is reduced to mouse clicks.
In summary, the experience with the document is static.

We believe that the new paradigms of
'beyond the desktop' can result from the
re-examination of the relationship of the human body to physical space and to physical interfaces with digital representations. New bridges need to be explored between the physical and virtual spaces. New graspable, touchable and adornable interfaces need
to be explored to provide users kinesthetic engagement with the learning content. In doing so, the document experience can change from the present static form to
a more dynamic, richer form. We term
such an expressive document experience,
the "Living Document."