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Hypertext

In its purest form, hypertext is a utopian concept that's been around for a few years; the term was coined 30 years ago by Ted Nelson, an eccentric visionary who dreamed of linking all the world's knowledge electronically, via computer networks, so that you and I could toss our two-cents-worth into any news article, textbook, screed--whatever. We would also pay about as much (a couple of cents) each time we accessed someone else's intellectual property, according to Nelson's scheme for automated tracking and payment of royalties. Nelson's Big Idea was to convert the world into a seamless, perfectly democratic information economy. He's still working on his big idea.

Others have created simpler versions of Nelson's brainchild. Today's World Wide Web uses a hypertext language called HTML that enables Web authors to insert individual cues into a document in order to link to other documents on the Web.


John Whalen