
50 years ago today the word “hypertext” was introduced - epsylon
https://gigaom.com/2015/08/24/hypertext-50/
======
andars
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
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
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...](http://hapgood.us/2014/08/14/the-web-is-broken-and-we-should-fix-
it/)

~~~
keeperofdakeys
Even after all these years, Project Xanadu is still kicking, trying to do
something like this - "the longest-running vaporware story in the history of
the computer industry".
[http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu.html)

------
sbuk
The article that influenced it all, reproduced on _The Atlantic_ ;
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-
ma...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-
think/303881/)

------
colanderman
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
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
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.

------
mrestko
Google N-Gram Viewer:
[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hypertext&year...](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)

~~~
MaysonL
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+c...](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)

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
> 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?

------
torgoguys
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.

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

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

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

