4 ms·
For anyone who doesn't know, the www is a a "hypertext" project where documents can contain links to each other. By clicking these links, a wide variety of cont
by logicallee 10y ago
For anyone who doesn't know, the www is a a "hypertext" project where documents can contain links to each other. By clicking these links, a wide variety of content is exposed. For example, consider how much easier it is to use Wikipedia than to have to look up references in the index (page numbers by word occurrence) of a printed book. You can just click on a link and follow it.
In all, most people spend most of their online time reading pages that have hyperlinks in it, which they follow.
It's certainly a paradigm shift similar to what Gutenberg accomplished.
- cr0sh 10y agoTBL created the web, certainly - but hypertext prior to the web goes far back as an idea (at least as far back as Alan Kay - also an ACM Turing Award winner, IIRC)...
- hcs 10y agoThe word, at least, was coined [1] by Ted Nelson, published 1965. The idea goes back at least to Vennevar Bush's Memex proposal [2] in 1945. I haven't heard Kay mentioned as an early proponent of hypertext, I'd be interested to hear more if you can find it. [1] https://elmcip.net/node/7367 https://elmcip.net/node/7367 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex
- chubot 10y agoYeah I hadn't heard Kay mentioned with hypertext either. I think he is profoundly mistaken about it too (or at least he was until very recently): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14035411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14035411
- tannhaeuser 10y agoWhile hyperlinks are the essential contribution (which however existed long before the web already), I think the foundational work of encoding text digitally and universally (pioneered by SGML inventor Charles Goldfarb, James Clark, the TEI project, and many others) isn't honored adequately here.