What is it about?

Hypertext is more than the Web, and predates it by 25 years. Indeed much important hypertext research was done before the Web and influences human knowledge across a range of domains. The paper documents the fields origins and explores the different ways in which hypertext/media has been used and studied across a range of domains. It closes by suggesting areas where overlooked aspects of hypertext still have the potential to improve our knowledge. 205 references should assist those new to the field to find some of the key systems and ideas.

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Why is it important?

Many know of the Web, but not that it is just a partial implementation of the wider concept of Hypertext. This paper describes the wider aspect of hypertext and how it maps across the Arts and Sciences and is not just a technical innovation. As we transition from notions of text informed by the printed page to digitally native text/media, ACM hypertext has a trove of thinking on these broad issues including from a time before the Web altered our general perceptions as to what linked and and non-sequential text might offer.

Perspectives

Part of the starting provocation was a young student commenting on hypertext: "...but didn't the Web do that already?". Understandable for anyone under 30, but also not true. Early hypertext ideas often had to be imagined as PCs then were less powerful and not networked. That may seem archaic to today's Web-ed world but the ideas were anything but. hypertext as a field still has much to offer and, in keeping with much modern research is innately interdisciplinary and has been since its outset.

Mark Anderson
University of Southampton

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Seven Hypertexts, September 2023, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3603163.3609048.
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