HyperText

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".

See Dec'2020 tweet-storm

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, Ted coined the phrase in the 1960s: http://www.w3.org/History.html
• and the history could be considered to go back earlier than Bush: (2014-05-22) Secret History Of Hypertext

Sean McGrath 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

SciFi encyclopedia entry: http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/hypertext

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

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

Some wider concepts:

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

Tools

• duh, the World Wide Web
• StorySpace
• Twine
• Wiki! (I'm a Wiki-Junkie)