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Conventional authoring languages are no more than delivery systems for instruction. Authors need a way of representing their underlying knowledge structures so that: (a) they know the relationship between concepts and therefore they do not make unwarranted leaps or linkages between them; and (b) end-users can see at a global level the interrelationship between concepts, etc. If end-users can see the overall map of knowledge then they can make informed choices about the order and sequence of learning (i.e. individualizing) and at the same time check that their sequence is coherent with more general understandings. In order to achieve this state of affairs we need to tackle the problems of making explicit concept maps (schemata, etc.) [i.e. exteriorization]; the state of affairs where authors and end-users come to know what they do or do not know [i.e. anomalous state meta-cognition]; and what happens when the authors or end-users have an external realization of their cognitive maps [i.e. self-confrontation] to examine. (This can be a graphical representation of the interrelationships between topics, etc.) 'And how will you enquire, Socrates, into that which you do not know? ... if you find what you want, how will you ever know that this is the thing which you did not know? ... a man cannot enquire either about that which he knows, or about that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has no need to enquire; and if not, he cannot; for he does not know the very subject about which he is to enquire.' (From Plato's Dialogues. Cited by CJ. van Rijsbergen, information Retrieval: New Directions; Old Solutions.)

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