6 ms·

50 years ago today the word “hypertext” was introduced

119 points by epsylon 11y ago

leoc 11y ago
Time for the image macro https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7RQK6LC3gdg/VGFsmQBX0RI/AAAAAAAAAWU/H2xNrkuvCbw/w640-h960-no/tedmacro.jpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7RQK6LC3gdg/VGFsmQBX0RI/A... again.
hanniabu 11y ago
We've come a long way with the Web,languages, and technologies. Can't imagine what another 50 years will bring.
Nemant 11y ago
50 years later we have words like "hyperloop". Fascinating
colanderman 11y ago
What an interesting character. You can see his vision for the web at http://www.xanadu.com/ http://www.xanadu.com/, it is quite unique. Seems to focus almost entirely on concepts of ownership, attribution, quotation, and composition. Given how much the modern web has developed, without significant infrastructure arising to support any of these, I wonder what that says about their utility in our current society, compared to those features which have arisen in the modern web (hyperlinking, anonymity, ephemerality, independence, content-addressability).
- scholia 11y ago
  We didn't have personal computers back then. Try to imagine if you'd had to design the web based on mainframes, and you had to go to a sort of cybercafe to rent a dumb terminal.... Remember also that technology was very expensive so the "ownership, attribution, quotation" system was the basis for micropayments. By the way, it's a terrific interview, and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it....
  - colanderman 11y ago
    Oh I totally get that! I'm commenting on where the web is now, in contrast to Mr. Nelson's view of what it "should" be.
sbuk 11y ago
The article that influenced it all, reproduced on The Atlantic; http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-ma...
mrestko 11y ago
Google N-Gram Viewer: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hypertext&year_start=1960&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chypertext%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hypertext&year...
- MaysonL 11y ago
  Interesting that "cyberspace",starting a few years after "hypertext", seems to be following almost the same trajectory. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hypertext%2C+cyberspace&year_start=1960&year_end=2015&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chypertext%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ccyberspace%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hypertext%2C+c...
andars 11y ago
Perhaps someday the original vision of hypertext will become commonplace, rather than the watered-down version that we have. > So, I still have a dream that the web could be less of a television channel, and more of a sea of interactive shared knowledge... http://worrydream.com/quotes/?author=Tim%20Berners-Lee http://worrydream.com/quotes/?author=Tim%20Berners-Lee
- IvyMike 11y ago
  That quote was from 1995. You've got wikis, you've got instant global knowledge search, you've got stack overflow, you've got forums devoted to the tiniest minutia of any topic, you've got random youtubers sharing their knowledge of their hobbies every day, you've a million other great things--I feel like we're doing ok. (I mean, yeah, the sea of interactive shared knowledge also has a garbage island...)
  - andars 11y ago
    I cannot dispute the fact that the web is fantastic in many ways, and I did not intend to do so. Nevertheless, the current incarnation of the web is not the full system envisioned by Nelson and even TimBL. I chose the excerpt from that full quote poorly. I'll try again, but I'd recommend reading the full linked quote (or watching the original source video). > The "World Wide Web" program, the original browser/editor, was in fact an editor, and you could make links as easily as you could follow them. And that was fundamental. There are two things which seem to me to be totally bizarre. One of them is the fact that you can't do that [now], that we've lost that. So in fact the thing is not interactive. I don't know if I can think of any hypertext experiments in research where you haven't been able to make links just as easily as following them. Authorship has always been right up there. And now, for some historical quirk, which I could go into, I have gone into, I won't go into, we have a whole bunch of things out there which are "browsers". The big ideas that TimBL is expressing is still fairly applicable 20 years later. Other interesting links: http://hapgood.us/2015/07/21/beyond-conversation/ http://hapgood.us/2015/07/21/beyond-conversation/ http://worrydream.com/TheWebOfAlexandria/ http://worrydream.com/TheWebOfAlexandria/ http://hapgood.us/2014/08/14/the-web-is-broken-and-we-should-fix-it/ http://hapgood.us/2014/08/14/the-web-is-broken-and-we-should...
torgoguys 11y ago
Gigaom is back? I thought it abruptly ceased operations (other than leaving the static website up) back in March. It doesn't look like there are many new articles being posting, but this is one.
0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
> Well enough to get three patents and independently invent ray tracing, if anyone is interested. It seems that Mr. Nelson has an implicit respect for patents, but I don't know why. I guess he can't be right about everything, or can he?

119 points by epsylon 11y ago

leoc 11y ago

Time for the image macro https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7RQK6LC3gdg/VGFsmQBX0RI/AAAAAAAAAWU/H2xNrkuvCbw/w640-h960-no/tedmacro.jpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7RQK6LC3gdg/VGFsmQBX0RI/A... again.

hanniabu 11y ago

We've come a long way with the Web,languages, and technologies. Can't imagine what another 50 years will bring.

Nemant 11y ago

50 years later we have words like "hyperloop". Fascinating

colanderman 11y ago

What an interesting character. You can see his vision for the web at http://www.xanadu.com/ http://www.xanadu.com/, it is quite unique. Seems to focus almost entirely on concepts of ownership, attribution, quotation, and composition. Given how much the modern web has developed, without significant infrastructure arising to support any of these, I wonder what that says about their utility in our current society, compared to those features which have arisen in the modern web (hyperlinking, anonymity, ephemerality, independence, content-addressability).

scholia 11y ago
We didn't have personal computers back then. Try to imagine if you'd had to design the web based on mainframes, and you had to go to a sort of cybercafe to rent a dumb terminal.... Remember also that technology was very expensive so the "ownership, attribution, quotation" system was the basis for micropayments. By the way, it's a terrific interview, and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it....
- colanderman 11y ago
  Oh I totally get that! I'm commenting on where the web is now, in contrast to Mr. Nelson's view of what it "should" be.

sbuk 11y ago

The article that influenced it all, reproduced on The Atlantic; http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-ma...

mrestko 11y ago

Google N-Gram Viewer: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hypertext&year_start=1960&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chypertext%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hypertext&year...

MaysonL 11y ago
Interesting that "cyberspace",starting a few years after "hypertext", seems to be following almost the same trajectory. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hypertext%2C+cyberspace&year_start=1960&year_end=2015&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chypertext%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ccyberspace%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hypertext%2C+c...

andars 11y ago

Perhaps someday the original vision of hypertext will become commonplace, rather than the watered-down version that we have. > So, I still have a dream that the web could be less of a television channel, and more of a sea of interactive shared knowledge... http://worrydream.com/quotes/?author=Tim%20Berners-Lee http://worrydream.com/quotes/?author=Tim%20Berners-Lee

IvyMike 11y ago
That quote was from 1995. You've got wikis, you've got instant global knowledge search, you've got stack overflow, you've got forums devoted to the tiniest minutia of any topic, you've got random youtubers sharing their knowledge of their hobbies every day, you've a million other great things--I feel like we're doing ok. (I mean, yeah, the sea of interactive shared knowledge also has a garbage island...)
- andars 11y ago
  I cannot dispute the fact that the web is fantastic in many ways, and I did not intend to do so. Nevertheless, the current incarnation of the web is not the full system envisioned by Nelson and even TimBL. I chose the excerpt from that full quote poorly. I'll try again, but I'd recommend reading the full linked quote (or watching the original source video). > The "World Wide Web" program, the original browser/editor, was in fact an editor, and you could make links as easily as you could follow them. And that was fundamental. There are two things which seem to me to be totally bizarre. One of them is the fact that you can't do that [now], that we've lost that. So in fact the thing is not interactive. I don't know if I can think of any hypertext experiments in research where you haven't been able to make links just as easily as following them. Authorship has always been right up there. And now, for some historical quirk, which I could go into, I have gone into, I won't go into, we have a whole bunch of things out there which are "browsers". The big ideas that TimBL is expressing is still fairly applicable 20 years later. Other interesting links: http://hapgood.us/2015/07/21/beyond-conversation/ http://hapgood.us/2015/07/21/beyond-conversation/ http://worrydream.com/TheWebOfAlexandria/ http://worrydream.com/TheWebOfAlexandria/ http://hapgood.us/2014/08/14/the-web-is-broken-and-we-should-fix-it/ http://hapgood.us/2014/08/14/the-web-is-broken-and-we-should...

torgoguys 11y ago

Gigaom is back? I thought it abruptly ceased operations (other than leaving the static website up) back in March. It doesn't look like there are many new articles being posting, but this is one.

0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago

> Well enough to get three patents and independently invent ray tracing, if anyone is interested. It seems that Mr. Nelson has an implicit respect for patents, but I don't know why. I guess he can't be right about everything, or can he?