Hypertext
In
computing,
hypertext is a
user interface paradigm for displaying
documents which, according to an early definition (Nelson 1970), "branch or perform on request." The most frequently discussed form of hypertext document contains automated
cross-references to other documents called
hyperlinks. Selecting a
hyperlink causes the computer to load and display the linked document.
A document can be static (prepared and stored in advance) or dynamically generated (in response to user
input). Therefore, a well-constructed hypertext system can encompass, incorporate or supersede many other user interface paradigms like menus and command lines, and can be used to access both static collections of cross-referenced documents and interactive
applications. The documents and applications can be local or can come from anywhere with the assistance of a
computer network like the
Internet. The most famous implementation of hypertext is the
World Wide Web.
The term "hypertext" is often used where the term
hypermedia would be more appropriate.
Foreshadowing hypertext was a simple
technique used in various
reference works (
dictionaries,
encyclopedias, etc.), consisting of setting a term in small capital letters, as an indication that an entry or article existed for that term (within the same reference work). In addition to such manual cross-references, there were experiments with various methods for arranging layers of
annotations around a document. The most famous example is the
Talmud.
The point of hypertext is to deal with the problem of
information overload. All of the persons mentioned below were obsessed with the realization that
humanity is simply drowning in
information, so that, too often, decisionmakers keep making foolish decisions and
scientists inadvertently duplicate existing work (e.g., the belated rediscovery of
Gregor Mendel's work).
In the early
20th century, two visionaries attacked the cross-referencing problem through proposals based on
labor-intensive
brute force methods.
Paul Otlet proposed a proto-hypertext concept based on his monographic principle in which all documents would be decomposed down to unique phrases stored on
index cards. In the
1930s,
H.G. Wells proposed the creation of a
World Brain. For reasons of cost, neither proposal got very far.
Therefore, all major
histories of hypertext start with
1945, when
Vannevar Bush wrote an article in
The Atlantic Monthly called "
As We May Think," about a futuristic device he called a
Memex. He described the device as a mechanical desk linked to an extensive archive of
microfilms and able to display
books,
texts or any document from the
library, and further able to automatically follow references from any given page to the specific page referenced.
Most experts do not consider the Memex to be a true hypertext system. However, the story starts with the Memex because "As We May Think" directly influenced and inspired the two
American men generally credited with the invention of hypertext,
Ted Nelson and
Douglas Engelbart.
Nelson coined the word "hypertext" in
1965 and helped
Andries van Dam develop the
Hypertext Editing System in
1968 at
Brown University; Engelbart had begun working on his
NLS system in
1962 at
Stanford Research Institute, although delays in obtaining funding, personnel and equipment meant that its key features were not completed until
1968. That year, Engelbart demonstrated a hypertext interface to the public for the first time, in what has come to be known as "
The Mother of All Demos".
After funding for NLS slowed to a trickle in
1974, progress on hypertext research nearly came to a halt. During this time, the
ZOG at
Carnegie Mellon started as an
artificial intelligence research project under the supervision of
Allen Newell. Only much later would its participants realize that their system was a hypertext system. ZOG was deployed in
1980 on the
U.S.S. Carl Vinson and later commercialized as
Knowledge Management System.
The first hypermedia application was the
Aspen Movie Map in
1977.
The early
1980s saw a number of
experimental hypertext and
hypermedia programs, many of whose features and
terminology were later integrated into the Web. However, none of these systems achieved widespread success or name recognition with
consumers.
Guide was the first hypertext system for
personal computers, but it was not very successful. Guide was quite expensive and difficult to use, as it had originally been developed for
UNIX workstations and was subsequently ported to
DOS. It was immediately eclipsed by
HyperCard.
In
August 1987,
Apple Computer revealed its
HyperCard application for its
Macintosh line of computers at the
MacWorld convention in
Boston, Massachusetts. HyperCard was an immediate hit and helped to popularize the concept of hypertext with the general public (although as
Jakob Nielsen later pointed out, it was technically a hypermedia system because its
hyperlinks originated only from regions on the screen). The first hypertext-specific
academic conference also took place that year.
Meanwhile, Nelson had been working on and advocating his
Xanadu system for over two decades, and the commercial success of HyperCard stirred
Autodesk to invest in his revolutionary ideas. The project limped on for four years without ever releasing a complete product, before Autodesk pulled the plug in the midst of the
1991-
1992 recession.
In
1980,
Tim Berners-Lee created
ENQUIRE, an early hypertext database system, somewhat like a
wiki. In late
1990, Berners-Lee, then a scientist at
CERN, invented the
World Wide Web to meet the demand for automatic information sharing between scientists working in different universities and institutes all over the world. Early in
1993, the
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the
University of Illinois released a first version of their
Mosaic browser to replace the two lacking existing
web browsers: one that ran only on
NeXTSTEP and one that was minimally
user-friendly. Mosaic ran in the
X Window System environment, popular in the research community, and offered usable window-based interaction. Web traffic exploded from only 500 known web servers in
1993 to over 10,000 in
1994 after the release of browser versions for both the PC and Macintosh environments.
All the earlier hypertext systems were overshadowed by the success of the
World Wide Web, even though it lacks many features of those earlier systems such as
typed links,
transclusion and
source tracking.
Besides the already mentioned HyperCard and World Wide Web, there are other noteworthy implementations of hypertext, with different feature sets:
*
Microsoft Word has evolved in orientation from paper to in-computer documents.
*
Information Presentation Facility used for displaying help in the
IBM operating systems.
*
Windows Help*Adobe's
Portable Document Format supports links.
*
Texinfo, the
GNU help system.
*
Project Xanadu*
XML with the
XLink extension.
*The many implementations of
wiki, like the
MediaWiki system that powers
Wikipedia, that aim to compensate for the lack of integrated editors in most Web browsers.
One of the top academic conferences for new research in hypertext is the annually held
ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia (
HT 2006)
Although not exclusively about hypertext, the World Wide Web series of conferences, organized by
IW3C2, includes many papers of interest. There is a
list with links to all conferences in the series.
See main article Hypertext fictionThe development of this branch of
electronic literature coincided with the growth and proliferation of hypertext development software and the emergence of electronic networks. Two software programs specifically designed for literary hypertext,
Storyspace and
Intermedia became available in the 1990's.
Authors
Storyspace 2.0, a professional level hypertext development tool, is available from
Eastgate Systems, which has also published many notable works of
electronic literature, including
Michael Joyce's
afternoon, a story,
Shelley Jackson's
Patchwork Girl, and
Stuart Moulthrop's
Victory Garden.
*Other works include
Julio Cortazar's
Rayuela and
Milorad Pavic's
Dictionary of the Khazars.
*An advantage of writing a narrative using hypertext technology is that the meaning of the story can be conveyed through a sense of spatiality and perspective that is arguably unique to digitally-networked environments. An author's creative use of nodes, the self-contained units of meaning in a hypertextual narrative, can play with the reader's orientation and add meaning to the text.
Critics and theorists
*
Jay David Bolter*
Robert Coover*
J.Yellowlees Douglas*
N. Katherine Hayles*
Michael Joyce*
George Landow*
Lev Manovich*
Stuart Moulthrop*
Ted Nelson*
Timeline of hypertext technology*
HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
*
Hypercomics*
*
*
*
*
*
*
The Shaping of Hypertextual Narrative (by Sergio Cicconi)
*
The ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia*
Electronic Literature Organization (for more on hypertext literature)
*
Hypertext: Behind the Hype*
mprove: Historical Overview of Hypertext*
The first use of hypertext (?) - TIFF image*
Co-link, a Brazilian research project*
Reviving Advanced Hypertext (whether and how concepts from hypertext research can be used on the Web)
*
Scripts Search Engine*
A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology*
the TAI/MAI/NAI Progession Overview and NRG's "Laws of Good Answers" presented as a Network Distributed Dense Meme Stack*
What is hypertext - Independent sources / references on web as to what hypertext in its nature is
