5a. Introduction to Hypertext

Hypertext

As we will learn about today, the idea of hypertext was formally defined in 1965 by Ted Nelson, although the idea predated it by twenty years.

Figure 1: Conceptual predecessors of hypertext. Image description 
(Office for Emergency Management & Library of Congress, c. 1940-1944); (Engelbart, 2008); (Gotanero, 2013)

 What is hypertext?

 We see hypertext everywhere. When you open up a Web Browser, you see “HTTP”

Figure 2: Browser address bar.
(Google Inc., 2018)

HTTP stands for the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, which is the protocol that underlies communication on the World Wide Web. In a nutshell, hypertext documents use links – or hyperlinks – to connect nodes. We will talk about the specifics of the Web at the end of this lesson.

You may also see HTTPS, which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. This is an extension of the original protocol that allows for better privacy and authenticity.

Let’s begin by just reminding ourselves a bit about the power of links in a short exercise.

Exercise: Ten Degrees of Wikipedia

You might have heard of the popular game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”. It’s the idea that the popular actor Kevin Bacon could be connected to almost anybody else in Hollywood in six degrees. 

Figure 3: Six degrees of Kevin Bacon.
(Skidmore, 2014)

Let’s play a similar sort of game to remember how hyperlinks work. Wikipedia is a great example. This large, collaboratively written and edited compendium of knowledge contains a mind-boggling array of informaton on topics big, small, obscure, important, and beyond. Let’s try to begin to navigate through Wikipedia using only hyperlinks. 

Please navigate to the University of Waterloo’s Wikipedia page. Those of you who are on our campus, or know a little bit about it, know that we have a fun problem with Canada Geese. Yet on the University of Waterloo’s Wikipedia page, there is (as of writing) no link or even mention of our infamous waterfowl. Using only links, I would like you to find yourselves on the Canada Goose page.

What’s the quickest route you could find?

Find out here!

The answer is “2 clicks” -> i.e. Canada -> Canada Goose

The above examples reflect the power of hypertext. Before hypertext, if you were reading a book about the University of Waterloo and then wanted to learn about geese, you probably had to put down the book, go to the library, pick up the book, and read it. As they are on disparate topics, they would undoubtedly be on different floors of a large research library like Dana Porter.

In short, hypertext has revolutionized how we consume and use information. 

Conclusion

Hypertext, which we will be discussing in this module, is today synonymous with the Web. If you think about hypertext, you may be thinking about the Web. Conversely, if you are thinking about the Web, you are probably thinking about hypertext (and even if this isn’t how you normally thought of the Web after our last exercise, you hopefully are).

Yet this module demonstrates that the World Wide Web is one particular implementation of hypertext as a concept. It is the most successful and distributed model of hypertext, but that does not mean that it is the “best” in any way. Indeed, history can show us how hypertext can be different!

For example, the Web’s version of hypertext has a few unique characteristics compared to what we’ll see in the examples for this lecture.

• The Web permits broken links: i.e. a "404"

• Links are one-directional.
• Reading content is generally distinct from writing content – for example, consuming content and writing content on the Web are very divided.
• Links generally go to whole pages: while they may go to anchors or headers in pages, our links generally do not go to sentences or even words.

To understand hypertext, then, we need to go back to where it all begins.