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

Edited: 2021-05-04 20:55:32.515587 | Tweet this! | Search Twitter for discussion

Bill Seitz