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Hypertext

50 years ago today the word ‘hypertext’ was introduced

Half a century is not that long for paradigm shifts in human history.

“On August 24, 1965 Ted Nelson used the word ‘hypertext’ (which he coined) in a paper he presented at the Association for Computing Machinery. I was able to interview him earlier this month about the event and his early thoughts on the future of computing. It is hard to know where to start when writing an introduction for Ted Nelson because his interests and accomplishments have spanned so many areas across six decades.”

(Byron Reese ~ GigaOm) ~ courtesy of erikhartman

Transclusion: A term coined by hypertext pioneer Ted Nelson

Document thinking is still alive and kicking.

“In computer science, transclusion is the inclusion of a document or part of a document into another document by reference. Rather than copying the included data and storing it in two places, a transclusion embodies modular design, by allowing it to be stored only once (and perhaps corrected and updated if the link type supported that) and viewed in different contexts.”

(Hacker Trips)

The secret history of hypertext: The conventional history of computing leaves out some key thinkers

Great to see this article appear in the publication where it all started, according to US history. Finally, some historical truth being added.

“Historians of technology often cite Bush’s essay as the conceptual forerunner of the Web. And hypertext pioneers like Douglas Engelbart, Ted Nelson, and Tim Berners-Lee have all acknowledged their debt to Bush’s vision. But for all his lasting influence, Bush was not the first person to imagine something like the Web. (…) For all his remarkable prescience, Bush never predicted anything like the Internet. That credit rightly goes to Otlet.”

(Alex Wright a.k.a. @alexgrantwright ~ The Atlantic)

Why cards are the future of the Web

Cards and tags, a magic duo. Ask Paul Otlet or Bill Atkinson.

“We are currently witnessing a re-architecture of the web, away from pages and destinations, towards completely personalised experiences built on an aggregation of many individual pieces of content. Content being broken down into individual components and re-aggregated is the result of the rise of mobile technologies, billions of screens of all shapes and sizes, and unprecedented access to data from all kinds of sources through APIs and SDKs. This is driving the web away from many pages of content linked together, towards individual pieces of content aggregated together into one experience.”

(Inside Intercom)

Writing better link texts

Nano copy design improves holistic UX.

“Linking from your content is important – it builds credibility and improves usability, which combined equals more satisfied readers and hopefully return visits. Finding the right material to link to takes time and effort; effort that is wasted if no one bothers to ‘Click here’.”

(Mich Walkden ~ Mich-communication)

Proceedings First International Congress on Web Studies PDF Logo

“The 1st international congress on Web Studies aims at providing a venue for researchers and professionals from different backgrounds for discussion, study, practical demonstrations, sharing, and exchange on new developments and theories regarding the World Wide Web. The congress therefore invites contributions from a heterogeneous set of fields and domains such as: Web systems, computational intelligence, human-computer interaction, digital theory, Web sociology, and well as interactive and digital arts. We also encourage contributions from businesses and organizations.” (1st Int’l Congress on Web Studies) – courtesy of markbernstein

How Xanadu Works: Technical Overview

“Pause for a moment and think about the history here. 1993 is 16 years ago as I write this, about the same span of time between Vannevar Bush’s groundbreaking 1945 article ‘As We May Think’ and Nelson’s initial work in 1960 on what would become the Xanadu project. As far as software projects go, this one has some serious history.” (Micah DubinkoMicahpedia) – courtesy of markbernstein