Disaster, doubt, and the origins of hypertext

Disaster, doubt, and the origins of hypertext

Hypertext and the World Wide Web are built on a complex network of ideas that originate in the military and ecological disasters of the short 20 th Century, 1914--1989, and in a world-spanning intellectual effort to prevent their recurrence. Though that effort now appears to have failed, and though the tragic story of the 20 th Century has not, it seems, concluded, we may learn profit by examining the concepts and ideals on which hypertext was built.

The Subversive Hyperlink

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

What the ephemerality of the Web means for your hyperlinks

Hyperlinks are a powerful tool for journalists and their readers. Diving deep into the context of an article is just a click away. But hyperlinks are a double-edged sword; for all of the internet’s boundlessness, what’s found on the Web can also be modified, moved, or entirely vanished.  The fragility of the Web poses an […]

No Longer No Sense of an Ending

This is my first feature piece on Contents Magazine, about harnessing the properties of hypertext and the Web for superior reader experiences and business results.

How the Web Was Lost – James Gleick

This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Webby Tim Berners-Lee with Stephen WittFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 389 pp., $30

The Missing Building Blocks of the Web

At a time when millions are losing trust in the the web’s biggest sites, it’s worth revisiting the idea that the web was supposed to be…

Visionary lays into the web

Ted Nelson is a visionary who is credited with coining the term hypertext, but he is highly critical of what the internet has become.

It's time to rebuild the web

The web was never supposed to be a few walled gardens of concentrated content owned by a few major publishers; it was supposed to be a cacophony of different sites and voices.

The story of this blog so far: 'AI', the death of web dev, and feeling like an outsider

Writing at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland

Vision and Reality of Hypertext and GUIs: 2.1.13 Microcosm @mprove

Microcosm (cf. 2.1.13) is a research project at the University of Southampton. Like Intermedia five years before, Microcosm is designed around the idea that material of diverse sources and formats should be tied together into one hypertext. To achieve this goal links have to be separated from the documents. They are stored and maintained in special link databases. In contrast to Intermedia, Microcosm plays the active role in gathering the necessary data out of the documents. For each topic it stores data on which documents contain information about it and also where inside the documents the information is located. This elaborated conception of links can be seen more as a kind of Memex’ trails than simple one-to-one links. Given this structure dynamic linking becomes possible. This means that links can be associated with generic text strings. Wherever this string shows up a link is placed automatically. This has the effect that documents that are imported for the first time into Microcosm can have links immediately.

The Evolution of Creativity

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

The Disappearing World Wide Web

Fare thee well, oh honey...

A Text Renaissance

There is a renaissance underway in online text as a medium. The Four Horsemen of this emerging Textopia are: Roam , a hypertext publishing platform best…

Hypermedia Systems

The revolutionary ideas that empowered the Web. A simpler approach to building applications on the Web and beyond with htmx and Hyperview. Enhancing web applications without using SPA frameworks.