Hypertext, a term coined by Theodor H. Nelson in the 1960s, refers also to a form of electronic text, a radically new information technology, and a mode of publication. As popularly conceived, this is a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways. Hypertext, as the term is used in this work, denotes text composed of blocks of text what Barthes terms a lexia and the electronic links that join them. Hypermedia simply extends the notion of the text in hypertext by including visual information, sound, animation, and other forms of data. Since hypertext, which links one passage of verbal discourse to images, maps, diagrams, and sound as easily as to another verbal passage, expands the notion of text beyond the solely verbal, I do not distinguish between hypertext and hypermedia.
Hypertext denotes an information medium that links verbal and nonverbal information.
Today, in the year 2000, we swim in a hyper-alloyed digital world of image links, text links, dynamic links, streaming audio and video, auctions, and shopping links on a daily basis. In order to answer some of these questions, I need to go back to the early authors of hypertext. These are the people who first defined the medium, who wrote the software to make it possible. This is no small thing. All rights reserved.