by Hugh M. Lewis

I have over the last few years received justifiable criticism of my web-pages for the opacity and density of their content, overall, and for the complexity of the navigational linkages that the overall system presents, especially to the novice surfer. It renders the system confusing and therefore uninviting to the casual visitor and the serious user alike. There is, I would say, a certain responsibility for any web-designer/developer to keep things  as simple, simple, simple as possible for the sake of the sanity of the Internet. Beyond my apologies I would suggest that there are two remedies emerging for the central problem of Lewis Works. These two remedies are on one level interconnected. That they are arising is evident in the pattern of traffic flow through the system. It is apparent that visitors are only apprehending parts of the whole, rather than the entire framework, at any one time, and that they are finding and visiting the pages through major search engines mostly, or through links that have developed in relation to other sites, on the basis of their particular interest in specific content found in the various pages visited. The pattern that is emerging is that more and more parts of the whole are being visited more frequently, and visitors are staying at particular pages and revisiting these pages for longer periods of time. In relation to the larger context of the worldwide web, the visibility and availability of the Lewis Works system is beginning to crystallize in parts and larger pieces that are groups of parts, rather than as a single well-integrated and immediately apprehended totality. 

It is as with the publication of this Newsletter or E-zine. Though it is not directly e-mailed and therefore its effect and visual impact is minimized or even, in most instances, non-existent when a recipient on the mailing list simply disregards or deletes the link notification, the Newsletter pages remain permanently posted on the web as a part of a larger back-grounded system, and as a result, eventually become visited by increasing numbers of people who may take a more serious interest in its content and its messages and meanings. The general effect of the Newsletter therefore is delayed and gradual in its onset, but more lasting in the long run than a temporary e-zine that is broadcast out to multiple locations at the same time.

First, the Lewis Works system is designed intentionally as both a comprehensive systems based framework, and simultaneously, as a framework that is meant to be back-grounded to a lot of other activities and interests that are normally played out in relation to the Internet. In other words, it is the main goal of Lewis Works to provision through various portals a comprehensive range of resources in a manner that makes the whole normally inconspicuous if not completely invisible to the occasional surfer.

Secondly, the Lewis Works system is intended at the same time to become increasingly integrated as it develops, such that it will work more directly, simply and seamlessly in the foreground for the benefit and increased utility value of the average web-user.

The primary goal of the Lewis Works framework is to deliberately, conscientiously explore and facilitate the process of systems-based integration in the formation of a new global meta-system. It is hoped that many extended articulatory structures, programs, projects and subsystems will emerge from a successful Lewis Works framework, by whatever name, serving to flesh out its skeleton and dress it in real clothes for presentation to the larger world.

It is hoped most that Lewis Works as a systems-based framework can serve down the road the interests and needs of an increasing array of different people, facilitating and mediating for those people their own adaptations to a rapidly changing global meta-systems context, and thereby helping them to realize their own sense of adaptive habitus and productive, modularized meta-system in their own way.

General Systems Essays, Vol. I