A distributed computer system

Claim 1

A hypermedia distributed computing system, including a communications medium (22), a plurality of workstations (24) coupled to the medium for enabling users to transfer digital textual data back and forth between the workstations, a file server (36) coupled to the medium for storing digital non-textual data files containing human perceivable information, transducers located near at least some of the workstations, the transducers being coupled to the communications medium for enabling users to record uniquely-named non-­textual data files on the file server and to playback such files subject to access authorization, and management means (34) coupled to the communication medium and to the file server, the management means including a database system including a database of uniquely-­named reference entries referring by name and interval to the non-textual data files, whereby users may be given selective access to selected ones and selected parts of selected ones of the non-textual data files by embedding the reference names corresponding thereto in textual data distributed to selected users; a database (41) of user-registered interest entries in the database system, with each of the interest entries identifying the reference to which it pertains, the user responsible for registering it, and a user-assigned reference value, means for periodically enumerating the database of interest, and for deleting any entries found to be no longer valid, means for periodically enumerating the database of references, and for deleting any entries of more than minimum age that have no interests referring to them, and means for deleting from the file server any non-textual files that have no references referring to them, thereby reclaiming storage space occupied by obsolete files.