Yes, children, hypertext existed even before the World Wide Web.

Newbie test: when you hear "Web" do you think "hypertext"? These days, "hypertext" almost means "non-Web hypertext".

[George Landow] 1992 definition: text composed of blocks of words (or images) linked electronically by multiple paths, chains, or trails in an open-ended, perpetually unfinished textuality described by the terms link, node, network, web, and path.

Traces back to Vannevar Bush ([MeMex], in 1945), heavily associated with Ted Nelson (XanaDu, Literary Machines) (actually, he coined the phrase in the 1960s: http://www.w3.org/History.html

Sean Mc Grath attributes to [Yuri Rubinsky] the phrase The trouble with hypertext is that it always takes you somewhere relevant.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/history.html

http://www.eastgate.com/Hypertext.html

An example I keep getting pointed toward: the [Victorian Web].

Mark Bernstein occasionally defines the entries in a Hyper Text [Film Festival]: Adaptation, [Wonder Boys], Mullholland Drive, Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, Memento, Sliding Doors, Timecode, Rashomon, Minority Report, Run Lola Run, Waking Life, Nashville...

Some wider concepts:

• Hyper Media

• [Cyber Text] - all reader-influenced [Text Machine]-s (uh-uh, i'm just a text machine...)

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