Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the underlying concept defining the structure of the World Wide Web. It is an easy-to-use and flexible format to share information over the Internet.

Etymology

The prefix hyper- (comes from the Greek prefix "υπερ-" and means "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, author Ted Nelson – who coined both terms in 1963 – 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": this is four syllables longer, and does not express the idea of extending hypertext.

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, first deployed in 1992.

History

In 1941, Jorge Luis Borges created a hypertext style novel - The Garden of Forking Paths.

In 1945, Vannevar Bush wrote an article in ''The Atlantic Monthly'' called "As We May Think", about a futuristic proto-hypertext device he called a Memex.

In 1963, Ted Nelson coined the terms 'hypertext' and 'hypermedia' in a model he developed for creating and using linked content (first published reference 1965). He later worked with Andries van Dam to develop the Hypertext Editing System in 1967 at Brown University. Douglas Engelbart independently began 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".

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, the first significant hypertext system for personal computers, was developed by Peter J. Brown at UKC in 1982.

In August 1987, Apple Computer released HyperCard for the Macintosh line at the MacWorld convention. Its impact, combined with interest in Peter J. Brown's GUIDE (marketed by OWL and released earlier that year) and Brown University's Intermedia, led to broad interest in and enthusiasm for hypertext and new media. The first ACM Hypertext academic conference took place in November 1987, in Chapel Hill NC, where many other applications, including the hypertext literature writing software Storyspace were also demoed

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 his revolutionary ideas. The project continued at Autodesk for four years, but no product was released.

In the early 1990s, Berners-Lee, then a scientist at CERN, invented the World Wide Web to meet the demand for simple and immediate information-sharing among physicists working at CERN and different universities or 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.

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.

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:

FRESS – A 1970s multi-user successor to the Hypertext Editing System.

Electronic Document System – An early 1980s text and graphic editor for interactive hypertexts such as equipment repair manuals and computer-aided instruction.

Information Presentation Facility – Used to display online help in IBM operating systems.

Intermedia – A mid-1980s program for group web-authoring and information sharing.

Storyspace – A mid-1980s program for hypertext narrative.

Texinfo – The GNU help system.

XML with the XLink extension – A newer hypertext markup language that extends and expands capabilities introduced by HTML.

Wikis – aim to compensate for the lack of integrated editors in most Web browsers. Various wiki software have slightly different conventions for formatting, usually simpler than HTML.

Adobe's Portable Document Format – A widely used publication format for electronic documents including links.

Windows Help

PaperKiller - A document editor specifically designed for hypertext. Started in 1996 as IPer (educational project for ED-Media 1997).

Amigaguide - released on Amiga Workbench 1990.

Academic conferences

Among the top academic conferences for new research in hypertext is the annual ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia ( ACM SIGWEB Hypertext Conference page). 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

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,'' ''Forward Anywhere''. Other works include Julio Cortázar'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 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.

One of the most successful computer games of all time, Myst, was first written in Hypercard. The game was constructed as a series of Ages, each Age consisting of a separate Hypercard stack. The full stack of the game consists of over 2500 cards. In some ways Myst redefined interactive fiction, using puzzles and exploration as a replacement for hypertextual narrative.

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. In some cases, hypertext can be more a problem to get appealing stories than a tool to develop creativity. However, they do see value in its ability to present several different views on the same subject in a simple way. This echoes the arguments of 'medium theorists' like Marshall McLuhan who look at the social and psychological impacts of the media. New media can become so dominant in public culture that they effectively create a "paradigm shift" (Lelia Green, 2001:15) as people have shifted their perceptions, understanding of the world and ways of interacting with the world and each other in relation to new technologies and media. So hypertext signifies a change from linear, structured and hierarchical forms of representing and understanding the world into fractured, decentralized and changeable media based on the technological concept of hypertext links.

Critics and theorists

Tim Berners-Lee

Jay David Bolter

Vannevar Bush

Robert Coover

J. Yellowlees Douglas

N. Katherine Hayles

Michael Joyce

George Landow

Lev Manovich

Stuart Moulthrop

Ted Nelson

Paul Otlet

See also

Timeline of hypertext technology

HTML (HyperText Markup Language)

Hypotext

Hyperwords

HTTP

Cybertext

References

Further reading

External links

Hypertext: Behind the Hype

Reviving Advanced Hypertext (whether and how concepts from hypertext research can be used on the Web)

;Hypertext Conferences

Ed-Media World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia, and Telecommunications

The ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia

Category:Hypermedia Category:Electronic literature Category:American inventions Category:1945 introductions Category:Ted Nelson

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Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
name	Ted Nelson
birth date	June 17, 1937
birth place	New York City, New York, U.S.
field	American sociologist, philosopher, and pioneer of information technology
work institutions	Project Xanadu
alma mater	Swarthmore College, Harvard University, Keio University
known for	Hypertext }}

Theodor Holm Nelson (born June 17, 1937) is an American sociologist, philosopher, and pioneer of information technology. He coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia" in 1963 and published it in 1965. He also has been credited with first using the words ''transclusion'', ''virtuality'', ''intertwingularity'', and ''teledildonics''.

Career

Nelson founded Project Xanadu in 1960 with the goal of creating a computer network with a simple user interface. The effort is documented in his 1974 book ''Computer Lib / Dream Machines'' and the 1981 ''Literary Machines''. Much of his adult life has been devoted to working on Xanadu and advocating it.

The Xanadu project itself failed to flourish, for a variety of reasons which are disputed. Journalist Gary Wolf published an unflattering history on Nelson and his project in the June 1995 issue of ''Wired'' calling it "the longest-running vaporware project in the history of computing". Nelson expressed his disgust on his website, referring to Wolf as a "Gory Jackal", and threatened to sue him. He also outlined his objections in a letter to Wired, and released a detailed rebuttal of the article.

Nelson claims some aspects of his vision are in the process of being fulfilled by Tim Berners-Lee's invention of the World Wide Web, but he dislikes the World Wide Web, XML and all embedded markup - regarding Berners-Lee's work as a gross over-simplification of his original vision:

HTML is precisely what we were trying to PREVENT— ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can't follow to their origins, no version management, no rights management. – Ted Nelson

Nelson co-founded Itty bitty machine company, or "ibm", which was a small computer retail store operating from 1977 to 1980 in Evanston, Illinois. The Itty bitty machine company was one of the few retail stores to sell the original Apple I computer. In 1978 he had a significant impact upon IBM's thinking when he outlined his vision of the potential of personal computing to the team that three years later launched the IBM PC.

Ted Nelson is currently working on a new information structure, ZigZag, which is described on the Xanadu project website, which also hosts two versions of the Xanadu code. He also developed XanaduSpace, a system for the exploration of connected parallel documents (an early version of this software may be freely downloaded).

Education and awards

Nelson earned a Bachelor's degree in philosophy from Swarthmore College in 1959, a Master's degree in sociology from Harvard University in 1963 and a Doctorate in Media and Governance from Keio University in 2002. In 1998, at the Seventh WWW Conference in Brisbane, Australia, Nelson was awarded the Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award.

In 2001 he was knighted by France as "Officier des Arts et Lettres". In 2004 he was appointed as a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, and associated with the Oxford Internet Institute, where he was a visiting fellow from 2004 through 2006.

In 2007 he celebrated his 70th birthday by giving an invited birthday lecture at the University of Southampton.

Personal life

He is the son of Emmy Award-winning director Ralph Nelson and the Academy Award-winning actress Celeste Holm.

His parents' marriage was brief and he was mostly raised by his grandparents in Greenwich Village with relatively little contact with his parents. He is of Norwegian and Swedish descent.

Populitism

''Populitism'' is a neologism coined by Nelson, a portmanteau combining "populism" with "elite." The word suggests the society-of-text envisioned by theorists like Shoshana Zuboff and Jay David Bolter, a writing space in which traces of authority persist only as local and contingent effects, the social equivalent of the deconstructed author-function. A "populite" culture might mark the first step toward realization of Jean-Francois Lyotard's "game of perfect information" where all have equal access to the world of data, and where "[g]iven equal competence (no longer in the acquisition of knowledge, but in its production), what extra performativity depends on in the final analysis is 'imagination,' which allows one either to make a new move or change the rules of the game." This is the utopia of information-in-process, the ultimate wetware dream of the clerisy: discourse converted with 100 percent efficiency into capital, the mechanism of that magical process being nomology or rule-making—admittedly a rather specialized form of "imagination".

Works

''Life, Love, College, etc.'' (1959)

''Computer Lib: You can and must understand computers now / Dream Machines: New freedoms through computer screens—a minority report'' (1974), Microsoft Press, revised edition 1987: ISBN 0-914845-49-7

''The Home Computer Revolution'' (1977)

''Literary Machines: The report on, and of, Project Xanadu concerning word processing, electronic publishing, hypertext, thinkertoys, tomorrow's intellectual revolution, and certain other topics including knowledge, education and freedom'' (1981), Mindful Press, Sausalito, California; publication dates as listed in the 93.1 (1993) edition: 1980-84, 1987, 1990–93

''The Future of Information'' (1997)

''A Cosmology for a Different Computer Universe: Data Model, Mechanisms, Virtual Machine and Visualization Infrastructure''. Journal of Digital Information, Volume 5 Issue 1. Article No. 298, July 16, 2004

''Geeks Bearing Gifts: How The Computer World Got This Way'' (2008; Chapter summaries)

''POSSIPLEX: Movies, Intellect, Creative Control, My Computer Life and the Fight for Civilization'' (2010), autobiography

Quotes

“Most people are fools, most authority is malignant, God does not exist, and everything is wrong"

“A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.”

“We should not impose regularity where it does not exist.” “I hope, that in our archives and historical filings of the future, we do not allow the techie traditions of hierarchy and false regularity to be superimposed to the teeming, fantastic disorderlyness of human life.”

Notes

References

External links

Ted Nelson's homepage

Detailed Ted Nelson bibliography

Xanadu project webpage

Transliterature - A Humanist Design

''The Magical Place of Literary Memory: Xanadu'' in Screening the Past, July 2005 by Belinda Barnet

''Ted Nelson and Xanadu'', in ''The Electronic Labyrinth'', 1993

Orality and Hypertext: An Interview with Ted Nelson

''Way Out Of The Box '', by Theodor Nelson, October 8, 1999

Software and Media for a New Democracy a talk given by Ted Nelson at the File festival Symposium/November/2005

Wired article, recalling interview with Nelson, August 2005

The Politics Of Internet Software 'Geeks Bearing Gifts', a talk given by Ted at the Oxford Internet Institute, November 30, 2005

Transclusion: Fixing Electronic Literature, a talk given by Ted at Google, January 29, 2007

Category:Ted Nelson Category:1937 births Category:American educators Category:American philosophers Category:American sociologists Category:Computer pioneers Category:Fellows of Wadham College, Oxford Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Innovators Category:Internet pioneers Category:Living people Category:American people of Swedish descent Category:American people of Norwegian descent Category:Swarthmore College alumni Category:Officiers of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

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