What's the Hype about Hypertext?( Assignment 2)

I will attempt to argue that Hypertext aids and influences the internet by:
-expanding ones ability to do research
-opening up a whole new world of information at your finger-tips
-Providing an new interesting type of fiction

Lets begin with a few definitions:
Hypertext is...

• "text which contains links to other texts." ( Source)

• "Documents written as hypertext contain text that when "clicked on" by the user with a mouse, links to other documents." (Source)
  

• "A way of presenting information online with connections between one piece of information and another. These connections are called hypertext links. Thousands of these hypertext links enable you to explore additional or related information throughout the online documentation. "( Same source as above)

• " Works in hypertext are meant to be more than words and other images. These productions (ingrained magnetically on computer diskette or CD) are conceived to take advantage of readers' and writers' propensities to seek out twists in narrative trajectories and to bushwhack from the main path of multifaceted reference topics. Hypertext books incorporate documents, graphics, sounds, and even blank slates upon which readers may compose their own variations on the authored components." ... ( Same source as above)

Did you click on any of the links to see the sources?
...If you did you saw an example of Hypertext

So who were the creative minds behind hypertext?

Theodor Holm Nelson : He coined the term hypertext in 1963 & Published it two years later.


Nelson believed that the interface should be self explanatory and easy to navigate for even the newest user.

In Nelson's own words this is how he created the notion of hypertext

"In 1960 I had a vision of a world-wide system of electronic publishing, anarchic and populist, where anyone could publish anything and anyone could read it. (So far, sounds like the web.) But my approach is about literary depth-- including side-by-side inter -comparison, annotation, and a unique copyright proposal. I now call this "deep electronic literature" instead of "hypertext," since people now think hypertext means the web."

But the story didnt begin with Mr. Nelson...
" Thats Mr. Nelson to You"

Other creative minds were thinking of ways to "link" written information to other data that was relevant : two of these "proto-hypertext"visionaries include...

Paul Otlet & H.G. Wells

...keep in mind that hypertext can trace it's roots back to many other renowned thinkers as well.

1st applications..

two of the earliest applications include the "Aspen Movie Map" in 1977 andin 1987 the more popular Apple "Hyper-card" application. Nelson worked on an application as well known as the Xanadu system although nothing was ever released.

This is what the Hyper card application looked like:


How has hypertext influenced the Internet we know today?
- Hypertext has given internet users a way to easily utilize information. At times when amounts of data can seem overwhelming hypertext makes it possible to have some level of convenient organization.

- Say your doing research on Ted Nelson for instance, using Wikipedia (which utilizes hypertext.) You can find out about his career, education etc. but then maybe something else catches your eye. You notice that there is more information about some of his colleagues that interests you. With a click of a button you can speedily access information that you may have otherwise overlooked.

- When looking at a news website hypertext makes it easy to find out more information about a story or a subject within a given topic.

-hypertext has become it's own style of interactive fiction.

"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."

...Many of these stories have become quite popular including Michael Joyce's Afternoon a Story



Hopefully you now have a better understanding of what the hype about hypertext is all about, and how it aids and influences the internet.

Assignment 2 Link