The hyperText Project
Our Working Understanding of Hypertext
This document was written and refers to work and subjects undertaken in 1995.
 ypertext
is probably best approached as a pragmatic exercise. In terms of teaching and
using hypertext authoring environments any effort of definition is towards its
quotidian use, rather than an effort to produce an account that seeks to get it
all tied up.
The emphasis within the
lab classes, and the use of hypertext for
writing, submitting, and assessment of work, is on a definition of hypertext as
digital non-linear writing and publication.
As many writers on hypertext correctly point out, there are many printed
texts that are basically non-linear (the Talmud, encyclopedias, dictionaries),
but the interest and use of hypertext that the project wishes to develop is one
that makes literal the possibilities of available digital technology for the
publication, presentation, and more importantly the writing of non-linear
documents. Within this definition of hypertext there is an emphasis upon the
idea of the link as the performative possibility of the text. Without such links
a digital text is not regarded as hypertext.
This is why this project started with an introduction to
Storyspace
, rather than HTML, since Storyspace is designed principally as a non-linear
writing tool. This is in contrast to HTML which, while exciting, should probably
be regarded as a publication tool and not something particularly conducive to
writing.
(An analogy I use is that of using Microsoft Word (well, perhaps not version
6.x) and PageMaker. It is easy to write and edit things in Word, but really, to
try and write an essay in PageMaker requires a particular sort of masochism. On
the other hand to lay out a brochure in Word is a pain, but PageMaker makes the
job much easier. And, yes, of course you can do either job in either program, up
to a point, but then you could try and run a marathon in ski boots too.)
The digital aspect of hypertext is self evident. It is a method of writing
that is computer based, computer mediated, and read via computer. Its role is
not to write things that are then exported into some form of hard copy (though
of course this is always an option) but to take advantage of the computer's
random access abilities to present text, sound, image, and video.
While some understand the non-linear nature of hypertext as a product of the
computer's random access abilities it is probably more relevant to reverse
this and consider hypertext to be a product of the links. Links are possible and
made literal because of the random access nature of the computer, and it is the
fact of the links that generates hypertext. This is why a dictionary is not, in
this definition, a hypertext.
As a consequence hypertext is a form of writing and publication that does
not need to be as sequential or linear as traditional writing, and allows
readers and writers to move through it in various ways.
For example within
Storyspace
any part of a web can be linked to any other part, whether this is
considered in terms of spaces, paragraphs, sentences, words, pictures or movies.
In addition any source link can have multiple destinations (unlike HTML) so that
a key term could be linked to a glossary entry, a discussion of its use, and all
the other instances of its use within the text. The user is generally free to
follow whichever links they prefer, and links can be named.
This combination of links and spaces (in HTML this would be anchors and
pages) means that hypertext can be written around several different models (and
indeed can do each simultaneously):
- The Logocentric Text
- a traditional linear text with a single and consecutive pathway established
through its spaces
- The Arboreal Text
- a central linear text is provided with a branching structure of
annotations, commentaries and discussions opening off this central thread (the
tree)
- The Rhizome Text
- a non-linear text that may or may not have various central 'nodes'
joined in multiple ways with other text spaces, these links are understood to be
thematically determined and defined (the potato)
Virtually all of the preliminary work that students have produced probably
falls into the 'arboreal' model, as does most WWW publication.
| 
