Hypertext

In computing, hypertext is a user interface paradigm for displaying documents which, according to an early definition (Nelson 1970), "branch or perform on request." The most frequently discussed form of hypertext document contains automated cross-references to other documents called hyperlinks. Selecting a hyperlink causes the computer to display the linked document within a very short period of time.

History

Foreshadowing hypertext was a simple technique used in various reference works (dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc.), consisting of setting a term in small capital letters, as an indication that an entry or article existed for that term (within the same reference work). In addition to such manual cross-references, there were experiments with various methods for arranging layers of annotations around a document. The most famous example is the Talmud.

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The point of hypertext is to deal with the problem of information overload. All of the persons mentioned below were obsessed with the realization that humanity is simply drowning in information, so that, too often, decisionmakers keep making foolish decisions and scientists inadvertently duplicate existing work (e.g., the belated rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's work).

Related Topics:
Information overload - Gregor Mendel

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In the early 20th century, two visionaries attacked the cross-referencing problem through proposals based on labor-intensive brute force methods. Paul Otlet proposed a proto-hypertext concept based on his monographic principle in which all documents would be decomposed down to unique phrases stored on index cards. In the 1930s, H.G. Wells proposed the creation of a World Brain. For obvious reasons like cost, neither proposal got very far.

Related Topics:
Paul Otlet - H.G. Wells - World Brain

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Therefore, all major histories of hypertext start with 1945, when Vannevar Bush wrote an article in The Atlantic Monthly called "As We May Think," about a futuristic device he called a Memex. He described the device as mechanical desk linked to an extensive archive of microfilms and able to display books, texts or any document from the library, and further able to automatically follow references from any given page to the specific page referenced.

Related Topics:
1945 - Vannevar Bush - The Atlantic Monthly - As We May Think - Memex

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Most experts do not consider the Memex to be a true hypertext system. However, the story starts with the Memex because "As We May Think" directly influenced and inspired the two American men generally credited with the invention of hypertext, Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbart.

Related Topics:
Ted Nelson - Douglas Engelbart

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Nelson coined the word "hypertext" in 1965 and helped Andries van Dam develop the Hypertext Editing System in 1968 at Brown University; Engelbart had begun 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.

Related Topics:
Andries van Dam - Hypertext Editing System - Brown University - NLS - Stanford Research Institute

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After funding for NLS slowed to a trickle in 1974, progress on hypertext research nearly came to a halt. During this time, the ZOG project at Carnegie Mellon started as an artificial intelligence research project under the supervision of Allen Newell. Only much later would its participants realize that their system was a hypertext system. ZOG was deployed in 1980 on the U.S.S. Carl Vinson and later commercialized as KMS.

Related Topics:
Artificial intelligence - Allen Newell

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The first hypermedia application was the Aspen Movie Map in 1977.

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The early 1980s saw a number of experimental hypertext and hypermedia programs, many of whose features and terminology were later integrated into the Web. However, none of these systems achieved widespread success or name recognition with consumers.

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Guide was the first hypertext system for personal computers, but it was not very successful. Guide was quite expensive and difficult to use, as it had originally been developed for UNIX workstations and was subsequently ported to DOS. It was immediately eclipsed by HyperCard.

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In August 1987, Apple Computer revealed its HyperCard application for its Macintosh line of computers at the MacWorld convention in Boston. HyperCard was an immediate hit and helped to popularize the concept of hypertext with the general public (although as Jakob Nielsen later pointed out, it was technically a hypermedia system because its hyperlinks originated only from regions on the screen). The first hypertext-specific academic conference also took place that year.

Related Topics:
Apple Computer - HyperCard - Macintosh - Jakob Nielsen

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Meanwhile, Nelson had been working on and advocating his Xanadu system for over two decades, and the commercial success of HyperCard stirred Autodesk to invest in his revolutionary ideas. The project limped on for four years without ever releasing a complete product, before Autodesk pulled the plug in the midst of the 1991-1992 recession.

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In late 1990, Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN, invented the World Wide Web to meet the demand for automatic information sharing between scientists working in different universities and institutes all over the world. Early in 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois released a first version of their Mosaic browser to replace the two lacking existing web browsers: one that ran only on NeXTSTEP and one that was minimally user-friendly. Mosaic ran in the X Window System environment, popular in the research community, and offered usable window-based interaction. Web traffic exploded from only 500 known web servers in 1993 to over 10,000 in 1994 after the release of browser versions for both the PC and Macintosh environments.

Related Topics:
Tim Berners-Lee - CERN - World Wide Web - National Center for Supercomputing Applications - University of Illinois - Mosaic browser - Web browser - NeXTSTEP - User-friendly - X Window System

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All the earlier hypertext systems were quickly overshadowed by the success of Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web, even though the latter lacked many features of those earlier systems such as typed links, transclusion and source tracking.

Related Topics:
World Wide Web - Typed link - Transclusion - Source tracking

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