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| What is Hypertext? |
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| Hypertext isn't as often thought, limited to an electronic text, but is more a way of presenting text
to the reader. It can be linear, as are most books, but it doesn't have to be. The reader
of a hypertext can choose his own path throught the text. |
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| Hypertext is best viewed as an
approach to information management in which data is stored in a network of nodes that
are connected by links. The term "Hypertext" was coined by Ted Nelson in 1965, in his
publication Literary Machines, where he described it as "non-sequential writing." |
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| By looking at the history of hypertext, and the people behind it, we can perhaps begin to see that the best
way to describe hypertext, is as the closest example of a storage system that mimics the way the human
brain works. Some of the pioneers probably didn't realise it at the time, but with hypertext systems, that
is what I believe we have very nearly achieved. |
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