Hypertext. What exactly is it?

“As popularly conceived, this is a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways.”

Nelson on hypertext.

 

We read in the Nelson reading about how hypertext opened doors to new ways of sharing text. However, we also find out the trepidation that abounded over the complexity of the computer age. Nelson writes:

The computer, and now the personal computer, have opened whole new realms of disorder, difficulty, and complication for humanity.

 

Nelson mentions how some people embraced the computer tide enthusiastically, and then others wanted to stop the rise of the computers and the confusion that they brought in. However, I like the third perspective that Nelson says we can have on the matter: To accept computers, and to work to intelligently organise their systems so that people can gain the benefits that they will bring. He could see that computers and hypertext could potentially simplify our working and personal lives.

For I believe that the potential for a new Golden Age, through such a unification of electronic text systems, lies before us, and just in time, too.

 

Computers have changed life enormously, making it possible to achieve so much more in quicker time, and I know I’m thankful that people like Theodore Nelson worked hard to bring in hypertext and computers into everyday life.

Vannevar Bush reading

The Bush reading, As We May Think, focuses on looking towards the future and pondering upon what technological advances may be made. It also explains the potential for computing devices.

There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things.

Bush reading.

 

Vannevar is indeed right that there are plenty of things to compute. When I read this sentence, I immediately think about how people are now using the internet to gain complex data about what people desire based on what pages they view, what ads they click on etc.

Companies are now gaining complex data about the psychology of consumers, what leads them buy a certain product, all through the analysis of internet usage. In a way I feel it is related to what Bush is describing here:

It is readily possible to construct a machine which will manipulate premises in accordance with formal logic, simply by the clever use of relay circuits. Put a set of premises into such a device and turn the crank, and it will readily pass out conclusion after conclusion, all in accordance with logical law, and with no more slips than would be expected of a keyboard adding machine.

 

It’s amazing, really, how computers have developed over the years to become the ultra-efficient, high-speed data machine that they are. And you can’t help but notice that Vannevar Bush was fairly accurate in the predictions included in his article.