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48-655: Project Xanadu ( / ˈ z æ n ə d uː / ZAN -ə-doo ) was the first hypertext project, founded in 1960 by Ted Nelson . Administrators of Project Xanadu have declared it superior to the World Wide Web , with the mission statement: "Today's popular software simulates paper. The World Wide Web (another imitation of paper) trivialises our original hypertext model with one-way ever-breaking links and no management of version or contents." Wired magazine published an article entitled "The Curse of Xanadu", calling Project Xanadu "the longest-running vaporware story in

96-485: A Memex . A Memex would hypothetically store — and record — content on reels of microfilm, using electric photocells to read coded symbols recorded next to individual microfilm frames while the reels spun at high speed, and stopping on command. The coded symbols would enable the Memex to index, search, and link content to create and follow associative trails. Because the Memex was never implemented and could only link content in

144-551: A wiki but without hypertext punctuation, which was not invented until 1987. The early 1980s also saw a number of experimental "hyperediting" functions in word processors and hypermedia programs, many of whose features and terminology were later analogous to the World Wide Web . Guide , the first significant hypertext system for personal computers , was developed by Peter J. Brown at the University of Kent in 1982. In 1980, Roberto Busa , an Italian Jesuit priest and one of

192-480: A 'hypertext' (meaning editing) interface to the public for the first time, in what has come to be known as " The Mother of All Demos ". In 1971 a system called Scrapbook , produced by David Yates and his team at the UK's National Physical Laboratory , went live. It was an information storage and retrieval system that included what would now be called word processing, e-mail and hypertext. ZOG , an early hypertext system,

240-618: A change from linear, structured and hierarchical forms of representing and understanding the world into fractured, decentralized and changeable media based on the technological concept of hypertext links. In the 1990s, women and feminist artists took advantage of hypertext and produced dozens of works. Linda Dement 's Cyberflesh Girlmonster a hypertext CD-ROM that incorporates images of women's body parts and remixes them to create new monstrous yet beautiful shapes. Caitlin Fisher's award-winning online hypertext novella These Waves of Girls (2001)

288-539: A conference originally for the people mentioned in Steven Levy 's Hackers , and the group started working on Xanadu with Autodesk's financial backing. According to economist Robin Hanson , in 1990 the first known corporate prediction market was used at Xanadu. Employees and consultants used it for example to bet on the cold fusion controversy at the time. While at Autodesk, the group, led by Gregory, completed

336-625: A few related authors. In 1983, Ben Shneiderman at the University of Maryland Human - Computer Interaction Lab led a group that developed the HyperTies system that was commercialized by Cognetics Corporation . They studied many designs before adopting the blue color for links . Hyperties was used to create the July 1988 issue of the Communications of the ACM as a hypertext document and then

384-456: A house rented by Greene, they hashed out their ideas for Xanadu; but at the end of the summer the group went their separate ways. Miller and Gregory created an addressing system based on transfinite numbers which they called tumblers , which allowed any part of a file to be referenced. The group continued their work, almost to the point of bankruptcy. In 1983, however, Nelson met John Walker , founder of Autodesk , at The Hackers Conference ,

432-573: A hypertext document usually replace the current piece of hypertext with the destination document. A lesser known feature is StretchText , which expands or contracts the content in place, thereby giving more control to the reader in determining the level of detail of the displayed document. Some implementations support transclusion , where text or other content is included by reference and automatically rendered in place. Hypertext can be used to support very complex and dynamic systems of linking and cross-referencing. The most famous implementation of hypertext

480-542: A new hypertext project in response to a request for a simple, immediate, information-sharing facility, to be used among physicists working at CERN and other academic institutions. He called the project "WorldWideWeb". HyperText is a way to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will. Potentially, HyperText provides a single user-interface to many large classes of stored information, such as reports, notes, data-bases, computer documentation and on-line systems help. We propose

528-500: A relatively crude fashion — by creating chains of entire microfilm frames — the Memex is regarded only as a proto-hypertext device, but it is fundamental to the history of hypertext because it directly inspired the invention of hypertext by Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbart. In 1965, Ted Nelson coined the terms 'hypertext' and 'hypermedia' as part of a model he developed for creating and using linked content (first published reference 1965). He later worked with Andries van Dam to develop

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576-552: A replacement for hypertextual narrative. Critics of hypertext claim that it inhibits the old, linear, reader experience by creating several different tracks to read on. This can also been seen as contributing to a postmodernist fragmentation of worlds. In some cases, hypertext may be detrimental to the development of appealing stories (in the case of hypertext Gamebooks ), where ease of linking fragments may lead to non-cohesive or incomprehensible narratives. However, they do see value in its ability to present several different views on

624-483: A version of the software, written in the C programming language , though the software did not work the way they wanted. However, this version of Xanadu was successfully demonstrated at The Hackers Conference and generated considerable interest. Then a newer group of programmers, hired from Xerox PARC , used the problems with this software as justification to rewrite the software in Smalltalk . This effectively split

672-552: Is a "complex maze". They go on to say that Hypertext is designed to be paper, and that the World Wide Web allows nothing more than dead links to other dead pages. In 2016, Ted Nelson was interviewed by Werner Herzog in his documentary, Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World . "By some, he was labeled insane for clinging on; to us, you appear to be the only one who is clinically sane", Herzog said. Nelson

720-427: Is often used where the term " hypermedia " might seem appropriate. In 1992, author Ted Nelson  – who coined both terms in 1963  – wrote: By now the word "hypertext" has become generally accepted for branching and responding text, but the corresponding word "hypermedia", meaning complexes of branching and responding graphics, movies and sound – as well as text – is much less used. Instead they use

768-509: Is set in three time periods of the protagonist exploring polymorphous perversity enacted in her queer identity through memory. The story is written as a reflection diary of the interconnected memories of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. It consists of an associated multi-modal collection of nodes includes linked text, still and moving images, manipulable images, animations, and sound clips. Adrienne Eisen (pen name for Penelope Trunk ) wrote hypertexts that were subversive narrative journeys into

816-538: Is the World Wide Web , written in the final months of 1990 and released on the Internet in 1991. In 1941, Jorge Luis Borges published " The Garden of Forking Paths ", a short story that is often considered an inspiration for the concept of hypertext. In 1945, Vannevar Bush wrote an article in The Atlantic Monthly called " As We May Think ", about a futuristic proto-hypertext device he called

864-606: The Hypertext Editing System (text editing) in 1967 at Brown University . It was implemented using the terminal IBM 2250 with a light pen which was provided as a pointing device . By 1976, its successor FRESS was used in a poetry class in which students could browse a hyperlinked set of poems and discussion by experts, faculty and other students, in what was arguably the world's first online scholarly community which van Dam says "foreshadowed wikis, blogs and communal documents of all kinds". Ted Nelson said in

912-506: The computer industry . On a daily basis, many hackers only interact virtually, and therefore rarely have face-to-face contact. The conference is a time for hackers to come together to share ideas. The first Hackers Conference was organized in 1984 in Marin County , California , by Stewart Brand and his associates at Whole Earth and The Point Foundation . It was conceived in response to Steven Levy 's book, Hackers: Heroes of

960-468: The 1960s that he began implementation of a hypertext system he theorized, which was named Project Xanadu , but his first and incomplete public release was finished much later, in 1998. Douglas Engelbart independently began working on his NLS system in 1962 at Stanford Research Institute, although delays in obtaining funding, personnel, and equipment meant that its key features were not completed until 1968. In December of that year, Engelbart demonstrated

1008-429: The 1981 Literary Machines . Computer Lib/Dream Machines is written in a non-sequential fashion: it is a compilation of Nelson's thoughts about computing, among other topics, in no particular order. It contains two books, printed back to back, to be flipped between. Computer Lib contains Nelson's thoughts on topics which angered him, while Dream Machines discusses his hopes for the potential of computers to assist

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1056-420: The 1990s. Judy Malloy 's Uncle Roger (1986) and Michael Joyce 's afternoon, a story (1987) are generally considered the first works of hypertext fiction. An advantage of writing a narrative using hypertext technology is that the meaning of the story can be conveyed through a sense of spatiality and perspective that is arguably unique to digitally networked environments. An author's creative use of nodes,

1104-507: The Computer Revolution , which inspired Brand to arrange a meeting between the individuals, or " hackers ", the book named. The first conference's roughly 150 attendees included Steve Wozniak , Ted Nelson , Richard Stallman , John Draper , Richard Greenblatt , Robert Woodhead , and Bob Wallace . The gathering has been identified as instrumental in establishing the libertarian ethos attributed to cyberculture , and

1152-513: The Internet began the creation of the Web on the Internet. As new web browsers were released, traffic on the World Wide Web quickly exploded from only 500 known web servers in 1993 to over 10,000 in 1994. As a result, all previous hypertext systems were overshadowed by the success of the Web, even though it lacked many features of those earlier systems, such as integrated browsers/editors (a feature of

1200-614: The World Wide Web series of conferences, organized by IW3C2 , also include many papers of interest. There is a list on the Web with links to all conferences in the series. Hypertext writing has developed its own style of fiction, coinciding with the growth and proliferation of hypertext development software and the emergence of electronic networks. Hypertext fiction is one of earliest genres of electronic literature , or literary works that are designed to be read in digital media. Two software programs specifically designed for literary hypertext, Storyspace and Intermedia , became available in

1248-511: The Xanadu programmers (including lead architects Mark S. Miller , Dean Tribble and Ravi Pandya) and licensed the Xanadu technology, though Memex soon faced financial difficulties, and the then-unpaid programmers left, taking the computers with them (the programmers were eventually paid). At around this time, Tim Berners-Lee was developing the World Wide Web . When the Web began to see large growth that Xanadu did not, Nelson's team grew defensive in

1296-506: The arts. In 1972, Cal Daniels completed the first demonstration version of the Xanadu software on a computer Nelson had rented for the purpose, though Nelson soon ran out of money. In 1974, with the advent of computer networking, Nelson refined his thoughts about Xanadu into a centralised source of information, calling it a " docuverse ". In the summer of 1979, Nelson led the latest group of his followers, Roger Gregory , Mark S. Miller and Stuart Greene , to Swarthmore, Pennsylvania . In

1344-427: The author of the document, the version of the document, the correct span of bytes, and the links associated with these bytes." Tumblers were created by Roger Gregory and Mark Miller . The idea behind tumblers comes from transfinite numbers . Hypertext "(...)'Hypertext' is a recent coinage. 'Hyper-' is used in the mathematical sense of extension and generality (as in 'hyperspace,' 'hypercube') rather than

1392-405: The branched literature writing software Storyspace , were also demonstrated. Meanwhile, Nelson (who had been working on and advocating his Xanadu system for over two decades) convinced Autodesk to invest in his revolutionary ideas. The project continued at Autodesk for four years, but no product was released. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, then a scientist at CERN , proposed and later prototyped

1440-872: The first commercial electronic book Hypertext Hands-On! . In August 1987, Apple Computer released HyperCard for the Macintosh line at the MacWorld convention . Its impact, combined with interest in Peter J. Brown's GUIDE (marketed by OWL and released earlier that year) and Brown University's Intermedia , led to broad interest in and enthusiasm for hypertext, hypermedia, databases, and new media in general. The first ACM Hypertext (hyperediting and databases) academic conference took place in November 1987, in Chapel Hill NC, where many other applications, including

1488-492: The group into two factions, and the decision to rewrite put a deadline imposed by Autodesk out of the team's reach. In August 1992, Autodesk divested the Xanadu group, which became the Xanadu Operating Company, which struggled due to internal conflicts and lack of investment. Charles S. Smith, the founder of a company called Memex (named after a hypertext system proposed by Vannevar Bush ), hired many of

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1536-400: The history of the computer industry". The first attempt at implementation began in 1960, but it was not until 1998 that an incomplete implementation was released. A version described as "a working deliverable ", OpenXanadu , was made available in 2014. Nelson's vision was for a "digital repository scheme for world-wide electronic publishing". Nelson states that the idea began in 1960, when he

1584-516: The implementation of a simple scheme to incorporate several different servers of machine-stored information already available at CERN, including an analysis of the requirements for information access needs by experiments... A program which provides access to the hypertext world we call a browser. ― T. Berners-Lee, R. Cailliau, 12 November 1990, CERN In 1992, Lynx was born as an early Internet web browser. Its ability to provide hypertext links within documents that could reach into documents anywhere on

1632-505: The medical sense of 'excessive' ('hyperactivity'). There is no implication about size — a hypertext could contain only 500 words or so. 'Hyper-' refers to structure and not size." The English prefix "hyper-" comes from the Greek prefix "ὑπερ-" and means "over" or "beyond"; it has a common origin with the prefix "super-" which comes from Latin. It signifies the overcoming of the previous linear constraints of written text. The term "hypertext"

1680-492: The mind of a woman whose erotic encounters were charged with a post-feminist satirical edge that cuts deep into the American psyche. There are various forms of hypertext fiction, each of which is structured differently. Below are four: The Hackers Conference The Hackers Conference is an annual invitation-only gathering of designers , engineers and programmers to discuss the latest developments and innovations in

1728-636: The original WorldWideWeb browser, which was not carried over into most of the other early Web browsers). Besides the already mentioned Project Xanadu , Hypertext Editing System , NLS , HyperCard , and World Wide Web, there are other noteworthy early implementations of hypertext, with different feature sets: Among the top academic conferences for new research in hypertext is the annual ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media . The Electronic Literature Organization hosts annual conferences discussing hypertext fiction , poetry and other forms of electronic literature . Although not exclusively about hypertext,

1776-587: The pioneers in the usage of computers for linguistic and literary analysis, published the Index Thomisticus , as a tool for performing text searches within the massive corpus of Aquinas 's works. Sponsored by the founder of IBM, Thomas J. Watson , the project lasted about 30 years (1949–1980), and eventually produced the 56 printed volumes of the Index Thomisticus the first important hypertext work about Saint Thomas Aquinas books and of

1824-411: The poem " Kubla Khan " by Samuel Taylor Coleridge . Nelson's talk at the ACM predicted many of the features of today's hypertext systems, but at the time, his ideas had little impact. Though researchers were intrigued by his ideas, Nelson lacked the technical knowledge to demonstrate that the ideas could be implemented. Ted Nelson published his ideas in his 1974 book Computer Lib/Dream Machines and

1872-482: The reader could choose their own path through an electronic document. He built upon this idea in a paper to the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1965, calling the new idea "zippered lists". These zippered lists would allow compound documents to be formed from pieces of other documents, a concept named transclusion . In 1967, while working for Harcourt, Brace , he named his project Xanadu, in honour of

1920-459: The same subject in a simple way. This echoes the arguments of 'medium theorists' like Marshall McLuhan who look at the social and psychological impacts of the media. New media can become so dominant in public culture that they effectively create a "paradigm shift" as people have shifted their perceptions, understanding of the world, and ways of interacting with the world and each other in relation to new technologies and media. So hypertext signifies

1968-514: The self-contained units of meaning in a hypertextual narrative, can play with the reader's orientation and add meaning to the text. One of the most successful computer games, Myst , was first written in HyperCard. The game was constructed as a series of Ages, each Age consisting of a separate HyperCard stack. The full stack of the game consists of over 2500 cards. In some ways, Myst redefined interactive fiction, using puzzles and exploration as

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2016-551: The strange term "interactive multimedia": this is four syllables longer, and does not express the idea of extending hypertext. Hypertext documents can either be static (prepared and stored in advance) or dynamic (continually changing in response to user input, such as dynamic web pages ). Static hypertext can be used to cross-reference collections of data in documents, software applications , or books on CDs . A well-constructed system can also incorporate other user-interface conventions, such as menus and command lines. Links used in

2064-508: The supposed rivalry that was emerging, but that they were losing. The 1995 Wired Magazine article "The Curse of Xanadu", provoked a harsh rebuttal from Nelson, but contention largely faded as the Web dominated Xanadu. In 1998, Nelson released the source code to Xanadu as Project Udanax, in the hope that the techniques and algorithms used could help to overturn some software patents . In 2007, Project Xanadu released XanaduSpace 1.0. A version described as "a working deliverable", OpenXanadu,

2112-487: Was a student at Harvard University . He proposed a machine-language program which would store and display documents, together with the ability to perform edits. This was different from a word processor (which had not been invented yet) in that the functionality would have included visual comparisons of different versions of the document, a concept Nelson would later call "intercomparison". On top of this basic idea, Nelson wanted to facilitate nonsequential writing, in which

2160-453: Was delighted by the praise. "No one has ever said that before!" said Nelson. "Usually I hear the opposite." In the design of the Xanadu computer system, a tumbler is an address of any range of content or link or a set of ranges or links. According to Gary Wolf in Wired , the idea of tumblers was that "the address would not only point the reader to the correct machine, it would also indicate

2208-618: Was developed at Carnegie Mellon University during the 1970s, used for documents on Nimitz class aircraft carriers, and later evolving as KMS (Knowledge Management System). The first hypermedia application is generally considered to be the Aspen Movie Map , implemented in 1978. The Movie Map allowed users to arbitrarily choose which way they wished to drive in a virtual cityscape, in two seasons (from actual photographs) as well as 3-D polygons . In 1980, Tim Berners-Lee created ENQUIRE , an early hypertext database system somewhat like

2256-423: Was made available on the World Wide Web in 2014. It is called open because "you can see all the parts", but as of June 2014 the site stated that it was "not yet open source". On the site, the creators claim that Tim Berners-Lee stole their idea, and that the World Wide Web is a "bizarre structure created by arbitrary initiatives of varied people and it has a terrible programming language" and that Web security

2304-2603: Was the subject of a PBS documentary, produced by KQED : Hackers: Wizards of the Electronic Age . Here is the list of participants at the original 1984 Hackers Conference, given in the contact list distributed to participants titled "List of Participants at the Hackers' Conference November 9–11, 1984" Arthur Abraham, Roe Adams, Phil Agre , Dick Ainsworth, Bob Albrecht , Bill Atkinson , Bill Bates, Allen Baum, Bruce Baumgart, Mike Beeler, Ward Bell, Gerry Berkowitz, Nancy Blachman , Steve Bobker, Stewart Bonn, Russell Brand, Stewart Brand , John Brockman , Dennis Brothers, Bill Budge , John Bumgarner, Bill Burns, Art Canfil, Steve Capps , Doug Carlston , Simon Cassidy, Dave Caulkins, Richard Cheshire, Fred Cisin, Mike Coffey, Margot Comstock , Rich Davis, Steven Dompier, Wes Dorman, John Draper , Mark Duchaineau, Les Earnest , Philip Elmer-DeWitt , Erik Fair, Richard Fateman , Lee Felsenstein , Jay Fenlason, Fabrice Florin, Andrew Fluegelman , Robert Frankston , Paul Freiberger , Rob Fulop , Robert Gaskins , Nasir Gebelli , Steve Gibson , Geoff Goodfellow , Richard Greenblatt , Roger Gregory , Leslie Grimm, Robert Hardy, Brian Harvey , Dick Heiser, Matt Herron, Andy Hertzfeld , Bruce Horn , David Hughes, John James, Tom Jennings , Jerry Jewell , Chris Jochumson, Ted Kaehler, Sat Tara Khalsa, Scott Kim , Peter LaDeau, Fred Lakin, Marc Le Brun, Jim Leeke, David Levitt, Steven Levy , Henry Lieberman , Efrem Lipkin, William Low, David Lubar , Scott Mace, John Markoff , David Maynard , Bob McConaghy, Roger Melen , Diana Merry , Mark Miller , Charles Moore, Michael Naimark , Ted Nelson , Terry Niksch, Guy Nouri, David Oster, Ray Ozzie , Donn Parker , Howard Pearlmutter, Mark Pelczarski , Michael Perry, Patricia Phelan, Tom Pittman , Eric Podietz, Kevin Poulsen , Jerry Pournelle , Larry Press, Steve Purcell , Christopher Reed, David Reed , Barbara Robertson, Michael Rogers , Pete Rowe, Peter Samson , Steve Saunders, Laura Scholl, Rich Schroeppel , Tom Scoville, Rony Sebok, Rhod Sharp, Bob Shur, Burrell Smith , David Snider, Tom Spence, Bud Spurgeon, Richard Stallman , Michael Swaine , David Taylor , Jack Trainor, Bud Tribble , Bruce H. Van Natta , Bob Wallace , Walter E. (Gene) Wallis, Bruce Webster , Ken Williams , Deborah Wise, Steve Witham, Robert Woodhead , Don Woods , Steve Wozniak , Fred Wright Scott Kim designed

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