Such high-stress conditions, with spontaneous mechanical forces equivalent to tens of thousands of atmospheres, give some indication of the chemistry that could be done by an assembler able to hold molecules firmly, and push. Dozens of systems are in use, the University of North Carolina, the ACM, and the IEEE have sponsored a conference, and Apple Computer has massively promoted a new hypertext product for the Macintosh, HyperCard . There have been hopes of a hypertext revolution bringing an impact on the scale of the Gutenberg revolution. It seems to have arrived. Words can mean many things.
Present systems are closer to the notepad class.
We shouldn't expect them to give library-class performance. Different hypertext systems have been built to serve different goals, though some aim to serve several. One goal is to improve personal filing systems by helping people connect information in ways that reflect how they think about it. Another is to improve educational publications by helping authors connect information in rich, explorable networks. Many recent hypertext systems are actually hypermedia systems in which authors can link descriptions to pictures, video, and sound.