Monday, April 23, 2007

1st Blog re-re do

I chose to talk about hypertext. A bit late now that i know the term and have realized that I have used this technology more times than I can count without knowing what I was doing was inserting hypertext into documents and slides or just clicking on them.

Hypertext, in its most frequently-used form, is text on a
computer which can be "clicked on" for more information on a subject. Hypertext is a relatively recent paradigm in computer user interfacing, attempting to overcome the old limitations of written text. Rather than remaining static like traditional text, hypertext will dynamically "branch or perform on request" taking the user to related subjects on demand (Nelson 1970). Thus, hypertext makes possible an organization of material through links and connections (called hyperlinks) which overcome the lack of interconnections in written or printed text.

This definition I did find interesting because it looks at broadening the horizons of text by making text itself interactive and multi layered.

1945- Memex is created, a fanciful idea that volumes of information could be stored at a desk top. Nelson and Engelbart took the idea further and developed the wonder of hypertext in its first stages in 1965 through the mid seventies. Small developments occurred that made leaps as far as the studies in hypertext went. In 1977 the first application of hypertext was used, further developments like "guide" allowed for the application to be available on personal computers (Wikipedia). Since this time hyperlinks have become a backbone to the Internet experience. Without hypertext a web page would just be a page and each document or related idea would therefore be separated in virtual space. With the use of hypertext the Internet has become a source of information with limitless depth and breadth of information.

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