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Week 5: Feb. 5
Hypertext: Towards a DefinitionFrom The Electronic Labyrinth:Hypertext is the presentation of information as a linked network of nodes which readers are free to navigate in a non-linear fashion. It allows for multiple authors, a blurring of the author and reader functions, extended works with diffuse boundaries, and multiple reading paths.
The term "hypertext" was coined by Ted Nelson, who defined it in his self-published Literary Machines as "non-sequential writing" (0/2). Many subsequent writers have taken hypertext to be a distinctly electronic technology--one which must involve a computer. For example, Janet Fiderio, in her overview "A Grand Vision," writes: Hypertext, at its most basic level, is a DBMS [database management system] that lets you connect screens of information using associative links. At its most sophisticated level, hypertext is a software environment for collaborative work, communication, and knowledge acquisition. Hypertext products mimic the brain's ability to store and retrieve information by referential links for quick and intuitive access. (237) Our definition does not limit itself to electronic text; hypertext is not inherently tied to technology, content, or medium. It is an organizational form which may just as readily be delivered on paper as electronically. Jakob Nielsen, the author of Hypertext and Hypermedia, defines hypertext as follows in "The Art of Navigating Through Hypertext:" Hypertext is non-sequential writing: a directed graph, where each node contains some amount of text or other information....[T]rue hypertext should also make users feel that they can move freely through the information according to their own needs. This feeling is hard to define precisely but certainly implies short response times and low cognitive load when navigating. (298)For a glimpse at the evolution of hypertext see A Short History of Hypertext. Vannevar Bush and the MemexIn the lore that has built up around the links, nodes and interconnectivity of hypertext, Vannevar Bush's 1945 article As We May Think (published in the Atlantic Monthly) is often cited as a visionary glimpse of hypertext. In "As We May Think," Bush proposes the creation of the "memex," a device which enables someone to organize and interconnect information, in effect to enhance memory through associative links:
The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain.... ...The first idea, however, to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection. Selection by association, rather than by indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage. Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory. |
The linked networks of hypertext documents form, in Nelson's vision, the Docuverse:
