What Is Hypertext?

In The Beginning ...

Over 50 years ago physical storage space for information in the form of physical libraries was projected to become increasingly scarce. One of the main reasons for the creation of the Internet was this anticipated need for a method of storing an ever increasing volume of data. So it was that the concept of an automated access to information was born.

Today cyberspace is the place and hypertext is the DNA that weaves together the strands of our collective wisdom and folly. Since 1992 the World Wide Web (WWW or Web) has been an evolving information network.

The Expanding Docuverse

On the Web there is no first or last page. What you see is what you get—for the moment. More or less will be available sooner than you blink. This mutability is a quality of the Web that one finds either enthralling or infuriating—sometimes both simultaneously.

The great attraction of the Web is easy access to a wealth of information. It's a constantly growing cybrary radiating countless branches. And it's available to us at the click of a mouse.

Any hypertext document is, at least for the time that we visit it, the virtual centre of an information matrix or docuverse built of connections—hyperlinks—to other documents in cyberspace. By "bookmarking" favourite Websites in one's browser we effectively becomes cybrarians.

True To Type

Hypertext through its chain of associations and the plastic, chaotic and nominally ordered docuverse whose evolution it actively promotes, mimics how the human mind works.

• Books are read, lingered over, memorized.
• Hypertext is scanned, passed through, saved to disk.

• Text on paper is immutable, permanent. The book was, is, and will be a solid and fixed object.
• Text on a screen is ephemeral, refreshed. Hypertext was, is, and will be possibly undergoing transformation even as you read.

• "And so it was written." The book is absolute. Books are relics of thought. They are complete, finished, the final word. Revision, if or when it occurs, must pass through many stages and levels of authorization and production.
• "Click here for further information." Hypertext is relative. Hypertext is thought taking shape. Hypertext is subject to immediate revision by anyone with access—authorized or not—to the document.

• The book promotes individual authorship, solitude and privacy. The means of production are controlled by a few whose approval must be gained should one wish to publish.
• Hypertext promotes interactivity, networking and collaborative writing. The means of production are available to anyone with access to a computer and the Internet.

• The book is old, respectable, an artifact—as it happened. The book represents the world viewed from a fixed and well-defended vantage point.
• Hypertext is young, capricious, fluid—as it happens. Hypertext represents the world viewed while moving through open spaces and sources.

Same As It Ever Was

Human relationship to the word and the media of its transmission has always been in a state of flux. Perspectives and ways of thinking are being continually challenged as our cultural contexts and subtexts become ever more hypertextualized.

It is becoming evident that on a global scale the cover-to-cover confines of the book are at the very least being augmented by the relatively open source of information that is the World Wide Web.

For better or for worse the docuverse is unfolding as it should.

- Allan Ennist

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