Hypertext

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other

electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the
reader can immediately access.[1] Hypertext documents are
interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically activated by a
mouse click, keypress set, or screen touch. Apart from text, the term
"hypertext" is also sometimes used to describe tables, images, and
other presentational content formats with integrated hyperlinks.
Hypertext is one of the key underlying concepts of the World Wide
Web,[2] where Web pages are often written in the Hypertext Documents that are connected by
Markup Language (HTML). As implemented on the Web, hyperlinks
hypertext enables the easy-to-use publication of information over
the Internet.

Etymology

"(...)'Hypertext' is a recent coinage. 'Hyper-' is used in

the mathematical sense of extension and generality (as
in 'hyperspace,' 'hypercube') rather than the medical
sense of 'excessive' ('hyperactivity'). There is no
implication about size— a hypertext could contain only
Engineer Vannevar Bush wrote "As
500 words or so. 'Hyper-' refers to structure and not
We May Think" in 1945 in which he
size."
described the Memex, a theoretical
proto-hypertext device which in turn
— Theodor H. Nelson, Brief Words on the
helped inspire the subsequent
Hypertext ([Link] invention of hypertext.
rs1977), 23 January 1967

The English prefix "hyper-" comes from the Greek prefix "ὑπερ-" and means "over" or "beyond"; it has a
common origin with the prefix "super-" which comes from Latin. It signifies the overcoming of the
previous 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 [3][4]– 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.
 — Nelson, Literary Machines, 1992

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, such as dynamic web pages). 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. Links used in a hypertext document usually replace
the current piece of hypertext with the destination document. A
lesser known feature is StretchText, which expands or contracts the
content in place, thereby giving more control to the reader in
determining the level of detail of the displayed document. Some Douglas Engelbart in 2009, at the
implementations support transclusion, where text or other content is 40th anniversary celebrations of
included by reference and automatically rendered in place. "The Mother of All Demos" in San
Francisco, a 90-minute 1968
Hypertext can be used to support very complex and dynamic presentation of the NLS computer
systems of linking and cross-referencing. The most famous system which was a combination of
implementation of hypertext is the World Wide Web, written in the hardware and software that
final months of 1990 and released on the Internet in 1991. demonstrated many hypertext ideas

History
In 1941, Jorge Luis Borges published "The Garden of Forking Paths", a short story that is often considered
an inspiration for the concept of hypertext.[5]

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. A Memex would hypothetically store — and record —
content on reels of microfilm, using electric photocells to read coded symbols recorded next to individual
microfilm frames while the reels spun at high speed, and stopping on command. The coded symbols would
enable the Memex to index, search, and link content to create and follow associative trails. Because the
Memex was never implemented and could only link content in a relatively crude fashion — by creating
chains of entire microfilm frames — the Memex is now regarded only as a proto-hypertext device, but it is
fundamental to the history of hypertext because it directly inspired the invention of hypertext by Ted
Nelson and Douglas Engelbart.

In 1963, Ted Nelson coined the terms 'hypertext' and 'hypermedia' as part of a model he developed for
creating and using linked content (first published reference 1965).[7] He later worked with Andries van
Dam to develop the Hypertext Editing System (text editing) in 1967 at Brown University. It was
implemented using the terminal IBM 2250 with a light pen which was provided as a pointing device.[8] By
1976, its successor FRESS was used in a poetry class in which students could browse a hyperlinked set of
poems and discussion by experts, faculty and other students, in what was arguably the world's first online
scholarly community[9] which van Dam says "foreshadowed wikis, blogs and communal documents of all
kinds".[10] Ted Nelson said in the 1960s that he began implementation of a hypertext system he theorized,
which was named Project Xanadu, but his first and incomplete public release was finished much later, in
1998.[6]
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' (meaning editing) interface to
the public for the first time, in what has come to be known as "The
Mother of All Demos".

ZOG, an early hypertext system, was developed at Carnegie

Mellon University during the 1970s, used for documents on Nimitz
class aircraft carriers, and later evolving as KMS (Knowledge
Management System).

The first hypermedia application is generally considered to be the

Aspen Movie Map, implemented in 1978. The Movie Map allowed
users to arbitrarily choose which way they wished to drive in a Ted Nelson gives a presentation on
virtual cityscape, in two seasons (from actual photographs) as well Project Xanadu, a theoretical
hypertext model conceived in the
as 3-D polygons.
1960s whose first and incomplete
In 1980, Tim Berners-Lee created ENQUIRE, an early hypertext implementation was first published in
database system somewhat like a wiki but without hypertext 1998.[6]
punctuation, which was not invented until 1987. The early 1980s
also saw a number of experimental "hyperediting" functions in
word processors and hypermedia programs, many of whose features and terminology were later analogous
to the World Wide Web. Guide, the first significant hypertext system for personal computers, was
developed by Peter J. Brown at the University of Kent in 1982.

In 1980, Roberto Busa,[11] an Italian Jesuit priest and one of the pioneers in the usage of computers for
linguistic and literary analysis,[12] published the Index Thomisticus, as a tool for performing text searches
within the massive corpus of Aquinas's works.[13] Sponsored by the founder of IBM, Thomas J.
Watson,[14] the project lasted about 30 years (1949-1980), and eventually produced the 56 printed volumes
of the Index Thomisticus the first important hypertext work about Saint Thomas Aquinas books and of a
few related authors.[15]

In 1983, Ben Shneiderman at the University of Maryland Human - Computer Interaction Lab led a group
that developed the HyperTies system that was commercialized by Cognetics Corporation. Hyperties was
used to create the July 1988 issue of the Communications of the ACM as a hypertext document and then
the first commercial electronic book Hypertext Hands-On!

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, hypermedia,
databases, and new media in general. The first ACM Hypertext (hyperediting and databases) academic
conference took place in November 1987, in Chapel Hill NC, where many other applications, including the
branched literature writing software Storyspace, were also demonstrated.[16]

Meanwhile, Nelson (who had been working on and advocating his Xanadu system for over two decades)
convinced Autodesk to invest in his revolutionary ideas. The project continued at Autodesk for four years,
but no product was released.

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, then a scientist at CERN, proposed and later prototyped a new hypertext project
in response to a request for a simple, immediate, information-sharing facility, to be used among physicists
working at CERN and other academic institutions. He called the project "WorldWideWeb".[17]
 HyperText is a way to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which
the user can browse at will. Potentially, HyperText provides a single user-interface to many
large classes of stored information, such as reports, notes, data-bases, computer documentation
and on-line systems help. We propose the implementation of a simple scheme to incorporate
several different servers of machine-stored information already available at CERN, including
an analysis of the requirements for information access needs by experiments... A program
which provides access to the hypertext world we call a browser. ― T. Berners-Lee, R.
Cailliau, 12 November 1990, CERN[17]

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.

As new web browsers were released, traffic on the World Wide Web quickly exploded from only 500
known web servers in 1993 to over 10,000 in 1994. As a result, all previous hypertext systems were
overshadowed by the success of the Web, even though it lacked many features of those earlier systems,
such as integrated browsers/editors (a feature of the original WorldWideWeb browser, which was not
carried over into most of the other early Web browsers).

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.
ZOG – a 1970s hypertext system developed at Carnegie
Mellon University.
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. Hypertext Editing System
Intermedia – a mid-1980s program for group web-authoring (HES) IBM 2250 Display
and information sharing. console – Brown University
HyperTies - a mid-1980s program commercially applied to 1969
hundreds of projects, including July 1988 Communications of
the ACM and Hypertext Hands-On! book.
Texinfo – the GNU help system.
KMS – a 1980s successor to ZOG developed as a commercial product.
Storyspace – a mid-1980s program for hypertext narrative.
Document Examiner - an hypertext system developed in 1985 at Symbolics for their Genera
operating system.
Adobe's Portable Document Format – a widely used publication format for electronic
documents.
Amigaguide – released on the Commodore Amiga Workbench 1990.
Windows Help – released with Windows 3.0 in 1990.
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.
PaperKiller – a document editor specifically designed for hypertext. Started in 1996 as IPer
(educational project for ED-Media 1997).
XML with the XLink extension – a newer hypertext markup language that extends and
expands capabilities introduced by HTML.

Academic conferences
Among the top academic conferences for new research in hypertext is the annual ACM Conference on
Hypertext and Social Media.[18] The Electronic Literature Organization hosts annual conferences
discussing hypertext fiction, poetry and other forms of electronic literature. Although not exclusively about
hypertext, the World Wide Web series of conferences, organized by IW3C2,[19] also include many papers
of interest. There is a list on the Web with links to all conferences in the series.[20]

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. Hypertext fiction is one of
earliest genres of electronic literature, or literary works that are designed to be read in digital media. Two
software programs specifically designed for literary hypertext, Storyspace and Intermedia, became available
in the 1990s. Judy Malloy's Uncle Roger (1986) and Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story (1987) are
generally considered the first works of hypertext fiction.[21][22]

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, 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.[23]

Critics of hypertext claim that it inhibits the old, linear, reader experience by creating several different tracks
to read on. This can also been seen as contributing to a postmodernist fragmentation of worlds. In some
cases, hypertext may be detrimental to the development of appealing stories (in the case of hypertext
Gamebooks), where ease of linking fragments may lead to non-cohesive or incomprehensible
narratives.[24] However, they do see value in its ability to present several different views on the same
subject in a simple way.[25] 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"[26] 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.

In the 1990s, women and feminist artists took advantage of hypertext and produced dozens of works. Linda
Dement's Cyberflesh Girlmonster a hypertext CD-ROM that incorporates images of women's body parts
and remixes them to create new monstrous yet beautiful shapes. Dr. Caitlin Fisher's award-winning online
hypertext novella These Waves of Girls (2001) is set in three time periods of the protagonist exploring
polymorphous perversity enacted in her queer identity through memory. The story is written as a reflection
diary of the interconnected memories of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. It consists of an associated
multi-modal collection of nodes includes linked text, still and moving images, manipulable images,
animations, and sound clips. Adrienne Eisen (pen name for Penelope Trunk) wrote hypertexts that were
subversive narrative journeys into the mind of a woman whose erotic encounters were charged with a post-
feminist satirical edge that cuts deep into the American psyche.

Forms of hypertext

There are various forms of hypertext, each of which are structured

differently. Below are four of the existing forms of hypertext:

Axial hypertexts are the most simple in structure. They

are situated along an axis in a linear style. These
hypertexts have a straight path from beginning to end
and are fairly easy for the reader to follow. An example of
an axial hypertext is The Virtual Disappearance of
Miriam.
Arborescent hypertexts are more complex than the axial A screenshot from a reading of
form. They have a branching structure which resembles Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl,
a tree. These hypertexts have one beginning but many where windows layer on top of each
possible endings. The ending that the reader finishes on other
depends on their decisions whilst reading the text. This
is much like gamebook novels that allow readers to
choose their own ending.
Networked hypertexts are more complex still than the two previous forms of hypertext. They
consist of an interconnected system of nodes with no dominant axis of orientation. Unlike the
arborescent form, networked hypertexts do not have any designated beginning or any
designated endings. An example of a networked hypertext is Shelley Jackson's Patchwork
Girl.
Layered hypertext consist of two layers of linked pages. Each layer is doubly linked
sequentially and a page in the top layer is doubly linked with a corresponding page in the
bottom layer. The top layer contains plain text, the bottom multimedia layer provides photos,
sounds and video. In the Dutch historical novel De man met de hoed[27] designed as
layered hypertext in 2006 by Eisjen Schaaf, Pauline van de Ven, and Paul Vitányi, the
structure is proposed to enhance the atmosphere of the time, to enrich the text with research
and family archive material and to enable readers to insert memories of their own while
preserving tension and storyline.

See also
Timeline of hypertext technology
Cybertext
Distributed Data Management Architecture
HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
Hyperwords
HTTP
 Hyperkino

References
1. "Hypertext" ([Link] (definition). Merriam-
webster Free Online Dictionary. Retrieved February 26, 2015.
2. Lehman, Jeffrey; Phelps, Shirelle (2005). West's Encyclopedia of American Law, Vol. 9
(2 ed.). Detroit: Thomson/Gale. p. 451. ISBN 9780787663742.
3. [Link] Complex information processing: a file structure
for the complex, the changing and the indeterminate
4. Rettberg, Jill Walker. "Complex Information Processing: A File Structure for the Complex, the
Changing, and the Indeterminate" ([Link] Electronic Literature as a
Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice.
5. Bolter, Jay David; Joyce, Michael (1987), "Hypertext and creative writing" ([Link]
[Link]?id=317431), Proceeding of the ACM conference on Hypertext - HYPERTEXT '87,
The Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 41–50, doi:10.1145/317426.317431 ([Link]
[Link]/10.1145%2F317426.317431), ISBN 089791340X, S2CID 207627394 ([Link]
[Link]/CorpusID:207627394).
6. Gary Wolf (June 1995). "The Curse of Xanadu" ([Link]
[Link]). WIRED. Vol. 3, no. 6.
7. Joyce, MI, Did Ted Nelson first use the word "hypertext" [sic], meaning fast editing" at Vassar
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d_sed.html), Vassar, archived from the original ([Link]
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8. Belinda Barnet. Memory Machines: The Evolution of Hypertext ([Link]
oks?id=4PM1DgAAQBAJ), 2013, pp.103-106.
9. Barnet, Belinda (2010-01-01). "Crafting the User-Centered Document Interface: The
Hypertext Editing System (HES) and the File Retrieval and Editing System (FRESS)" (http://
[Link]/dhq/vol/4/1/000081/[Link]). Digital Humanities Quarterly. 4
(1).
10. "Where meter meets mainframe: An early experiment teaching poetry with computers | News
from Brown" ([Link] [Link].
Retrieved 2016-05-24.
11. (in Italian) Andrea Tornielli, Padre Busa, il gesuita che ha inventato l'ipertesto ([Link]
[Link]/documenti/dettaglio-articolo/articolo/web-busa-6893/) Archived ([Link]
[Link]/web/20141229160656/[Link]
colo/articolo/web-busa-6893/) 2014-12-29 at the Wayback Machine, La Stampa -
VaticanInsider, 11/08/2011
12. Matthew Zepelin Computers and the Catholic Mind: Religion, Technology, and Social
Criticism in the Postwar United States ([Link]
_the_Catholic_Mind_Religion_Technology_and_Social_Criticism_in_the_Postwar_United_
States), July 5, 2014
13. Morto padre Busa, è stato il pioniere dell'informatica linguistica ([Link]
[Link]/veneto/notizie/cronaca/2011/10-agosto-2011/morto-padre-busa-stato-pioniere-informat
[Link]), Corriere del Veneto, 15. August 2011
14. "Religion: Sacred Electronics" ([Link]
[Link]/time/magazine/article/0,9171,867529,[Link]#ixzz1Ug8KDNnn), Time, 31 December
1956, 15 August 2011
15. Thomas N. Winter, " Roberto Busa, S.J., and the Invention of the Machine-Generated
Condordance", Digital commons, University of Nebraska [1] ([Link]
gi/[Link]?article=1069&context=classicsfacpub)
16. Hawisher, Gail E., Paul LeBlanc, Charles Moran, and Cynthia L. Selfe (1996). Computers
and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979–1994: A History Ablex
Publishing, Norwood NJ, p. 213
17. WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project ([Link] The
World Wide Web consortium.
18. SIGWEB Hypertext Conference ([Link]
[Link]/conferences/[Link]), ACM, archived from the original ([Link]
g/conferences/[Link]) on 2008-10-24.
19. IW3C2 ([Link]
20. "Conferences", IW3C2 ([Link]
21. Rettberg, Jill Walker (2012). "Electronic Literature Seen from a Distance: The Beginnings of
a Field" ([Link] Dichtung Digital (41).
hdl:1956/6272 ([Link]
22. Berens, K. I. (2014-07-30). "Judy Malloy's seat at the (database) table: A feminist reception
history of early hypertext literature" ([Link] Literary and
Linguistic Computing. 29 (3): 340–348. doi:10.1093/llc/fqu037 ([Link]
c%2Ffqu037). ISSN 0268-1145 ([Link]
23. Parrish, Jeremy. "When SCUMM Ruled the Earth" ([Link]
3613/[Link] [Link]. Archived from the original (h
ttp://[Link]/do/feature?cId=3134600) on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2008-05-02.
24. ¿Es el hipertexto una bendición o un...? ([Link]
[Link]) [Is hypertext a blessing or a...?] (in Spanish), Biblum
literaria, Jul 2008.
25. The Game of Reading an Electronic Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ([Link]
[Link]/~scriptor/papers/[Link]), CA: U Calgary.
26. Green 2001, p. 15.
27. "Welkom" ([Link] [Link].

Documentary film
Andries van Dam: Hypertext: an Educational Experiment in English and Computer Science
at Brown University. Brown University, Providence, RI, U.S. 1974, Run time 15:16, Hypertext
([Link] at IMDb, Full Movie on the Internet Archive ([Link]
[Link]/details/AndyVanDamHypertextFilm)

Bibliography
Green, Lelia (2001), Technoculture: From Alphabet to Cybersex, Allen & Unwin Ep,
ISBN 978-1-86508048-2.

Further reading
Engelbart, Douglas C (1962). "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework" (http
s://[Link]/web/20110504035147/[Link]
[Link]). AFOSR-3233 Summary Report, SRI Project No. 3579. Archived from the original (htt
p://[Link]/pubs/[Link]) on 2011-05-04. Retrieved 2011-05-20.
 Nelson, Theodor H. (September 1965). "Complex information processing: a file structure for
the complex, the changing and the indeterminate" ([Link]
36). ACM/CSC-ER Proceedings of the 1965 20th national conference.
Nelson, Theodor H. (September 1970). "No More Teachers' Dirty Looks" ([Link]
[Link]/[Link]). Computer Decisions.
——— (1973). "A Conceptual framework for man-machine everything". AFIPS Conference
Proceedings. Vol. 42. pp. M22–23.
Yankelovich, Nicole; Landow, George P; Cody, David (1987). "Creating hypermedia
materials for English literature students". SIGCUE Outlook. 20 (3).
Heim, Michael (1987). Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing. New
Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-07746-9.
van Dam, Andries (July 1988). "Hypertext: '87 keynote address" ([Link]
emex/HT_87_Keynote_Address.html). Communications of the ACM. 31 (7): 887–95.
doi:10.1145/48511.48519 ([Link] S2CID 489007 (https://
[Link]/CorpusID:489007).
Conklin, J. (1987). "Hypertext: An Introduction and Survey". Computer. 20 (9): 17–41.
doi:10.1109/MC.1987.1663693 ([Link]
S2CID 9188803 ([Link]
Byers, T. J. (April 1987). "Built by association". PC World. 5: 244–51.
Crane, Gregory (1988). "Extending the boundaries of instruction and research". T.H.E.
Journal (Technological Horizons in Education) (Macintosh Special Issue): 51–54.
Nelson, Theodor H. (1992). Literary Machines 93.1. Sausalito, CA: Mindful Press. ISBN 978-
0-89347-062-3.
Moulthrop, Stuart; Kaplan, Nancy (1994). "They became what they beheld: The futility of
resistance in the space of electronic writing". Literacy and computers: The complications of
teaching and learning with technology. pp. 220–237.
Cicconi, Sergio (1999). "Hypertextuality" ([Link]
[Link]). Mediapolis. Berlino & New York: Ed. Sam Inkinen & De Gruyter: 21–43.
Bolter, Jay David (2001). Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of
Print. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 978-0-8058-2919-8.
Landow, George (2006). Hypertext 3.0 Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of
Globalization: Critical Theory and New Media in a Global Era (Parallax, Re-Visions of
Culture and Society). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-
8257-9.
Buckland, Michael (2006). Emanuel Goldberg and His Knowledge Machine. Libraries
Unlimited. ISBN 978-0-313-31332-5.
Ensslin, Astrid (2007). Canonizing Hypertext: Explorations and Constructions. London:
Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-9558-7.
Barnet, Belinda. (2013) Memory Machines: The Evolution of Hypertext (Anthem Press;
2013) A technological history of hypertext,

External links
Hypertext: Behind the Hype ([Link] Archived (http
s://[Link]/web/20170614153026/[Link]
2017-06-14 at the Wayback Machine
 Reviving Advanced Hypertext ([Link]
xt/), whether and how concepts from hypertext research can be used on the Web.

Hypertext conferences
EdMedia + Innovate Learning ([Link] an international
conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
HyperText - ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia ([Link]
org/literature/conference_series/acm_conference_on_hypertext_and_hypermedia)

Retrieved from "[Link]