History of hypertext

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Early conceptions of hypertext defined it as text that could be connected by a linking system to a range of other documents that were stored outside that text. In 1934 Belgian bibliographer Paul Otlet developed a blueprint for links that telescoped out from hypertext electrically to allow readers to access documents, books, photographs, and so on, stored anywhere in the world.

History Recorders of information have long looked for ways to categorize and compile it. There are various methods of arranging layers of references/annotations within a document. Print reference works, such as dictionaries and encyclopedias, have used various typographical elements such as bold text, small caps, and symbols such as the manicule or arrow to indicate terms that can be cross-referenced, or looked up under another entry in the text. For example, instead of a hyperlink to another article, they might have the term formatted as ☞ hyperlink or → hyperlink. The cross-references and marginal notes in printed text served a linking function similar to what is seen in hypertext, and links in digital encyclopedias replaced textual cross-references.

Ancient proto-hypertextual literature Venkatraman Balasubramanian, David Porush, and others argue that the concept of hypertext can be traced back as far as to the ancient texts of Ramayana, Mahabharata, and the Talmud:

"The Talmud, with its heavy use of annotations and nested commentary, and Indian epics such as Ramayana and Mahabharata (stories branching off to other stories) are ancient prototypes of hypertext representation." "The Talmud makes a very good analog of the Internet. The little notations on the sides are hot buttons. The different commentaries are very like frames, a common HTML implementation in which different sections of text can be read as accompaniments to each other, but can be, indeed must be, read at different times and speeds in separate spaces on the electronic page. But beyond their physical similarities, both hypertext and the Talmud imply a way of knowing that is very different from the linear book."

Modern proto-hypertextual literature

Jorge Luis Borges - The Garden of Forking Paths Janet Murray has referenced Jorge Luis Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths" as a precursor to the hypertext novel and aesthetic:

"The concept Borges described in 'The Garden of Forking Paths'—in several layers of the story, but most directly in the combination book and maze of Ts'ui Pen—is that of a novel that can be read in multiple ways, a hypertext novel. Borges described this in 1941, prior to the invention (or at least the public disclosure) of the electromagnetic digital computer. Borges also mentions how hypertext has similarities to a labyrinth in which each link brings the navigator to a set of new links, in an ever expanding maze. Not only did he invent the hypertext novel—Borges went on to describe a theory of the universe based upon the structure of such a novel." —Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort

James Joyce - Finnegans Wake In "The Role of the Reader", Umberto Eco drew the following semiotic schema, "tracing possible nodes of association linking the words 'Neanderthal,' 'Meander,' and 'Tale' from which Joyce formed the transformative word 'Meandertale.' The newly coined word 'Meandertale' appears to signify the very name of the process that forms it: a meandering quest for associations between words — a quest in which these associations simultaneously tell the story of the words' evolution and transform them. In such a well-ventilated world, perhaps one necessary constraint might be to assume that no word suffers more than six degrees of separation from any other:"

Eco's description of the process of decoding the puns in Finnegans Wake evokes the notion of hypertext buried in James Joyce's writing:

"The field that we have outlined utilizes only a restricted quantity of the lexemes existing in Finnegans Wake. While it would be interesting to trace the entire system of interconnections, such a task would require one to reduce the work, a layer at a time, to each of its possible readings. Every lexeme in every reading might then become the patriarch of a new chain of associations, sending back to other fields, so that by connecting the fields together, one could trace an unending ribbon of associations. Every word of the book becomes the main issue that introduces every other word, a sort of topological maze in which everything is both the deep 'inside' and the peripheral 'outside.'"

Information system thinking Later, several scholars entered the scene who believed that humanity was drowning in information, causing foolish decisions and duplicating efforts among scientists. These scholars proposed or developed proto-hypertext systems predating electronic computer technology. For example, 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. Michael Buckland summarized the very advanced pre-World War II development of microfilm based on rapid retrieval devices, specifically the microfilm based workstation proposed by Leonard Townsend in 1938 and the microfilm and photoelectronic based selector, patented by Emanuel Goldberg in 1931. Buckland concluded: "The pre-war information retrieval specialists of continental Europe, the 'documentalists,' largely disregarded by post-war information retrieval specialists, had ideas that were considerably more advanced than is now generally realized." But, like the manual index card model, these microfilm devices provided rapid retrieval based on pre-coded indices and classification schemes published as part of the microfilm record without including the link model which distinguishes the modern concept of hypertext from content or category based information retrieval.

The Memex

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