Everything about Hypertext totally explained
Hypertext most often refers to
text on a
computer that will lead the user to other, related information on demand. Hypertext represents a relatively recent innovation to
user interfaces, which overcomes some of the limitations of written text. Rather than remaining static like traditional text, hypertext makes possible a dynamic organization of information through links and connections (called
hyperlinks). Hypertext can be designed to perform various tasks; for instance when a user "clicks" on it or "hovers" over it, a bubble with a word definition may appear, a web page on a related subject may load, a video clip may run, or an application may open.
Etymology
The prefix
hyper- ("over" or "beyond") signifies the overcoming of the old linear constraints of written text. The term "hypertext" is often used where the term
hypermedia might seem appropriate. In 1992
Ted Nelson - who coined both terms in 1965 - wrote:
By now the word "hypertext" has become generally accepted for branching and responding text, but the corresponding word "hypermedia," meaning complexes of branching and responding graphics, movies and sound - as well as text - is much less used. Instead they use the strange term "interactive multimedia" - four syllables longer, and not expressing the idea that it extends hypertext. - Nelson, Literary Machines 1992
Types and uses of hypertext
Hypertext documents can either be static (prepared and stored in advance) or dynamic (continually changing in response to user
input). Static hypertext can be used to cross-reference collections of data in documents,
software applications, or books on CDs. A well-constructed system can also incorporate other user-interface conventions, such as menus and command lines. Hypertext can develop very complex and dynamic systems of linking and cross-referencing. The most famous implementation of hypertext is the
World Wide Web.
History
Early precursors to hypertext
Recorders of information have long looked for ways to categorize and compile it. Early on, experiments existed with various methods for arranging layers of
annotations around a document. The most famous example of this is the
Talmud. Various other
reference works (for example
dictionaries,
encyclopedias, etc.) also developed a precursor to hypertext, consisting of setting certain words in small capital letters, indicating that an entry existed for that term within the same reference work. Sometimes the term would be preceded by a pointing hand
dingbat,
☞like this, or an
arrow,
➧like this.
Later, several scholars entered the scene who believed that
humanity was drowning in
information, causing foolish decisions and duplicating efforts among scientists. These scholars proposed or developed proto-hypertext systems predating electronic computer technology. For example, 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.
Michael Buckland summarized the very advanced pre-World War II development of microfilm based on rapid retrieval devices, specifically the microfilm based workstation proposed by
Leonard Townsend in 1938 and the microfilm and photoelectronic based selector, patented by
Emmanuel Goldberg in 1931. Buckland concluded: "The pre-war information retrieval specialists of continental Europe, the 'documentalists,' largely disregarded by post-war information retrieval specialists, had ideas that were considerably more advanced than is now generally realized." But, like the manual index card model, these microfilm devices provided rapid retrieval based on pre-coded indices and classification schemes published as part of the microfilm record without including the link model which distinguishes the modern concept of hypertext from content or category based
information retrieval.
The Memex
All major
histories of what we now call hypertext start in
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, able to display
books,
writings, or any document from a
library. The Memex would also be able to create 'trails' of linked and branching sets of pages, combining pages from the published microfilm library with personal annotations or additions captured on a microfilm recorder. Bush's vision was based on extensions of 1945 technology - microfilm recording and retrieval in this case. However, the modern story of hypertext 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.
The invention of hypertext
Ted Nelson coined the words "hypertext" and "hypermedia" in
1965 and worked with
Andries van Dam to 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. In December of 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".
Funding for NLS slowed after
1974. Influential work in the following decade included
NoteCards at
Xerox PARC and
ZOG at
Carnegie Mellon. ZOG started in 1972 as an
artificial intelligence research project under the supervision of
Allen Newell, and pioneered the "frame" or "card" model of hypertext. ZOG was deployed in
1982 on the
U.S.S. Carl Vinson and later commercialized as
Knowledge Management System. Two other influential hypertext projects from the early 1980s were Ben Shneiderman's
The Interactive Encyclopedia System (TIES) at the
University of Maryland (1983) and
Intermedia at
Brown University (1984).
Applications
The first hypermedia application was the
Aspen Movie Map in
1977. In
1980,
Tim Berners-Lee created
ENQUIRE, an early hypertext database system somewhat like a
wiki. The early
1980s also saw a number of
experimental hypertext and
hypermedia programs, many of whose features and
terminology were later integrated into the Web.
Guide was the first hypertext system for
personal computers.
In
August 1987,
Apple Computer revealed its
HyperCard application for the
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. The first hypertext-specific
academic conference took place in
November 1987, in Chapel Hill NC.
Meanwhile Nelson, who had been working on and advocating his
Xanadu system for over two decades, along with the commercial success of HyperCard, stirred
Autodesk to invest in Nelson's revolutionary ideas. The project continued at Autodesk for four years, but no product was released.
Hypertext and the World Wide Web
In the late
1980s, Berners-Lee, then a scientist at
CERN, invented the
World Wide Web to meet the demand for automatic information-sharing among scientists working in different universities and institutes all over the world. In 1992,
Lynx was born as an early Internet web browser. Its ability to provide hypertext links within documents that could reach into documents anywhere on the Internet began the creation of the web on the Internet.
Early in
1993, the
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the
University of Illinois released the first version of their
Mosaic web browser to supplement the two existing
web browsers: one that ran only on
NeXTSTEP and one that was only minimally
user-friendly. Because it could display and link graphics as well as text, Mosaic quickly became the replacement for Lynx. Mosaic ran in the
X Window System environment, which was then popular in the research community, and offered usable window-based interactions. It allowed images as well as text to anchor hypertext links. It also incorporated other protocols intended to coordinate information across the Internet, such as
Gopher.
After the release of web browsers for both the
PC and
Macintosh environments, traffic on the World Wide Web quickly exploded from only 500 known web servers in
1993 to over 10,000 in
1994. Thus, all earlier hypertext systems were overshadowed by the success of the web, even though it originally lacked many features of those earlier systems, such as an easy way to edit what you were reading,
typed links,
backlinks,
transclusion, and
source tracking.
In
1995,
Ward Cunningham made the first
wiki available, which built on the web by adding easy editing, and (within a single wiki) backlinks and limited source tracking. Wikis continue to be a medium where features are implemented, which were developed or imagined in the early explorations of hypertext.
Implementations
Besides the already mentioned
Project Xanadu,
Hypertext Editing System,
NLS,
HyperCard, and
World Wide Web, there are other noteworthy early implementations of hypertext, with different feature sets:
Academic conferences
Among the top academic conferences for new research in hypertext is the annual
ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia (
HT 2006
). Although not exclusively about hypertext, the World Wide Web series of conferences, organized by
IW3C2, include many papers of interest. There is a
list on the web with links to all conferences in the series.
Hypertext fiction
See main article Hypertext fiction
Hypertext writing has developed its own style of fiction, coinciding 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 1990s.
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,
Stuart Moulthrop's
Victory Garden, and Judy Malloy's
its name was Penelope. Other works include
Julio Cortazar's
Rayuela and
Milorad Pavić'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's 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 of hypertext claim that it inhibits the old, linear, reader experience by creating several different tracks to read on, and that this in turn contributes to a
postmodernist fragmentation of worlds. However, they do see its value in its ability to present several different views on the same subject in a simple way.
Critics and theorists
Jay David Bolter
Robert Coover
J. Yellowlees Douglas
N. Katherine Hayles
Michael Joyce
George Landow
Lev Manovich
Stuart Moulthrop
Ted NelsonFurther Information
Get more info on 'Hypertext'.
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