Understanding a Vision: What is Hypertext?
Hypertext Literature: Honors Mentorship Research Project
Tidewater Community College,
Humanities 199-G1B Spring 1999
Sadie L. Cornell
What is Hypertext?
Not surprisingly I have found a great deal of answers to this question. Many have attempted the great task of offering up understanding of this complex medium. Some of the answers I have found have been very vague and technical; others have been very direct and simple. It is my understanding that the World Wide Web is a huge hypertext, and this is true, but the forms hypertext takes from there have become increasingly diversified. I understand the concept of hypertext but have a hard time digesting the flow of the varied forms because the majority of them do not have a set progression that is apparent to the reader and many times do not give the closure that most readers are accustomed to. There is definite purpose to be found, but as intended there is no traditional beginning or ending and this has proven challenging. In general, the human mind works well with the associative organization of the World Wide Web because we process information much in the same way as we are able to retrieve it from the web, but then you throw in the unexpected changes that many hypertext novels have incorporated into their format, and I begin to feel a sense of vertigo.
Various Definitions
Theodor Holm Nelson coined the term "Hypertext"
Home Introduction History Literary
Hypertexts Hypertext Poem Research Notes
designed and developed by S. Cornell and
D. Reiss
modified 16 June 1999 by S. Cornell