a form of electronic text a radically new information technology a mode of publication HYPERTEXT (1)

Ted Nelson: "By ‘hypertext’ I mean non-sequential writing -- text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen. As popularly conceived, this is a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways.” HYPERTEXT (2)

Jay David Bolter (School of Literature,Communication, and Culture Georgia Institute of Technology) : “ A hypertext consists of topics and their connections, and [...] the topics can be paragraphs, sentences, or individual words. A hypertext is like a printed book that the author has himself attacked with a pair of scissors and cut into convenient verbal sizes.... The author defines its structure by establishing electronic connections among the slips” HYPERTEXT (3)

J. Fiderio: “At its most sophisticated level, hypertext is a software environment for collaborative work, communication, and knowledge acquisition. Hypertext products mimic the brain's ability to store and retrieve information by referential links for quick and intuitive access.” HYPERTEXT (4)

Nicholas Negroponte (Professor of Media Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founding chairman of MIT's Media Laboratory): “Hypermedia is an extension of hypertext, a term for highly interconnected narrative, or linked information.... In a printed book, sentences, paragraphs, pages, and chapters follow one another in an order determined not only by the author but also by the physical and sequential construct of the book itself. While a book may be randomly accessible and your eyes may browse quite haphazardly, it is nonetheless forever fixed by the confines of three physical dimensions. In the digital world, this is not the case. Information space is by no means limited to three dimensions. An expression of an idea or train of thought can include a multidimensional network of pointers to further elaborations or arguments, which can be invoked or ignored. The structure of the text should be imagined like a complex molecular model. Chunks of information can be reordered, sentences expanded, and words given definitions on the spot…... These linkages can be embedded either by the author at "publishing" time or later by readers over time. Interaction is implicit in all multimedia.” (1995 ) HYPERTEXT (5)

J. McDaid (New York Institute of Technology) : “ Hypermedia implies linking and navigation through material stored in many media: text, graphics, sound, music, video, etc. But the ability to move through textual information and images is only half the system: a true hypermedia environment also includes tools that enable readers to rearrange the material.” HYPERTEXT (6)

HYPERTEXT (7) “The World Wide Web offers truly networked hypertext and gave the concept its final popular break-through, so that today it is more or less associated with this implementation. … The Web is a gobal hypertext system. A computer-based system for linking documents to other related documents. Links are embedded within the text of a document in the form of highlighted words or images and, when activated, cause the linked document to be instantly retrieved and displayed. The linked document can in itself contain links to other documents and so on ad infinitum. Links are most commonly activated by pointing and clicking with a mouse.” Andrew Ford: Spinning the Web. How to provide information on the Internet From “Hypertext concepts: A Historical Perspective”

A term that includes hypermedia, signifies text composed of blocks of words (or images) linked electronically by multiple paths, chains, or trails in an open-ended web (or electronic book). Hypertext, in other words, is an information technology in which a new element -- the link -- plays a major part. All the chief practical, cultural, and educational characteristics of this medium derive from the fact that linking creates new kinds of connectivity and reader choice. Hypertext is therefore properly described as multisequential or multilinear rather than nonlinear writing. From HYPERTEXT (8)

Multimedia: designating or pertaining to a form of artistic, educational, etc., communication using more than one medium. Excerpted from Oxford Talking Dictionary. Copyright ® 1998 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Multimedia: text, images, sound, animations and video all together Multimedia: the use of several different media to convey information (text, audio, graphics, animation, video). From MULTIMEDIA

Hypermedia: A method of structuring information in different media for presentation to a user (usually via a workstation) whereby related items of information are interconnected. Excerpted from Oxford Talking Dictionary. Copyright ® 1998 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. HYPERMEDIA (1)

Hypermedia: a logical extension of the term hypertext, in which audio, video, plain text, and non-linear hyperlinks intertwine to create a generally non-linear medium of information. This contrasts with multimedia, which, although often capable of random access in terms of the physical medium, is essentially linear in nature. The World Wide Web is a classic example of hypermedia, whereas a movie on a DVD is an example of standard multimedia. Of course, the lines between the two can (and often do) blur depending on how a particular technological medium is implemented. From HYPERMEDIA (2)

Hypermedia: hypertext with a difference - hypermedia documents contain links not only to other pieces of text, but also to other forms of media - sounds, images, and movies. Images themselves can be selected to link to sounds or documents. Hypermedia simply combines hypertext and multimedia. From HYPERMEDIA (3)

TEXT / HYPERTEXT / MULTIMEDIA / HYPERMEDIA

While the distinction between hypertext and hypermedia has been useful in the past, in general these terms have become synonymous. HYPERTEXT / HYPERMEDIA

“… all our experiences of hypertexts are linear: each reading of a hypertext necessarily takes place in time and is therefore takes form as a sequence. No matter how many link choices we have, we have to read individual lexias in linear order. Written or printed texts are linear in two senses: (1)they present matter-to-be-read in a linear order and (2)they are generally read more or less in sequential order, in a sequence. (Printed texts with end- or footnotes, however, present a multisequential order, though, of course, they must be read linearly or sequentially.) Hypertexts differ from scholarly footnoted texts, therefore, in the degree to which they demand a multisequential reading experience. One can read an end- or footnoted text as a fundamentally linear text by ignoring the notes or citations; one cannot read a hypertext at all by ignoring the links.” From Conclusion: hypertext reading is linear but multisequential. Linearity, nonlinearity, and multilinearity

Hypertext is by definition modular, since each linked document (chunk or lexia) forms a separate module. What are the implications of such modularity? All hypertexts are in a sense always unfinished since one can always add another module. Hypertext projects don't seem to need or demand complete organization; they may be unsymmetrical, or they may grow and change. In many cases, one doesn't have to have a finished hypertext project or web for it to be usable. In educational or informational hypertexts, for example, one can use them when they are only partially complete. From Modularity