Hypertext for the PC and PC-Compatibles

Abstract

Recent advances in computer technology have created new and exciting ways to approach the analysis and presentation of literature. Chief among these is hypertext, a computer program that sets before us completely different methods of organizing information and linking it together to form unique, electronic documents. In this sense, hypertext is as new as computers yet as traditional as the etymology of the word text itself: a texture of threads that reach out by means of the computer program and connect original works, critical studies, bibliographies, historical backgrounds, photographs, drawings, and sound. We generally associate text with paper, magazines, and books. A hypertext document frees us from the constraints that paper, pagesize, and format have traditionally imposed. It is characteristically nonlinear and open in structure and offers many possible places to begin and end. With hypertext we create a context. The reader does not simply read from page one to the end but explores this context by treating each component not in isolation but rather as part of a larger structure in which everything is connected. For example, in a presentation on the baroque, in addition to literature, the textual environment could include an overview of the history of the period, and examples of the baroque in art, architecture, and in music. This can be achieved in a single hypertext document instead of having to deal with many individual books, records, audio tapes, photographs and slides. The reader can also move from one medium to another (hypermedia) and thereby better appreciate how the baroque arts were born not in isolation but as part of a larger, interrelated cultural context. The nonlinear organization of text is not exclusive to the world of computers. My work with hypertext frequently reminds me of Julio Cortaizar's novel 62, modelo para armar (1968), whose crisscrossing threads of events taking place in London, Vienna, and Paris, is an excellent example of textured narrative prose. This novel, of course, was derived from earlier experiments in nonlinear, open structure in his Rayuela of 1963. Through the use of texture and nonlinear development, Cortaizar, as a novelist, sought to provoke new responses in his readers; we, as critics and teachers, may also effect in our readers and students a much deeper understanding of literature through the use of the similar techniques available through hypertext. Ted Nelson is the person generally regarded as the father of hypertext because of his work on the Editing System at Brown University in 1967 and 1968 and later on the even more expansive Xanadu project. His efforts have continued to evolve at Brown in the form of an extensive project known originally as Context-32 and now as Intermedia. Context32, under the direction of Professor George P. Landow, is an English course, English Literature from 1700 to the present, made up of 1,000 text and graphic files and 1,300 links that create a context emphasizing the interrelatedness of the Victorian age. Brown University students originally used it on IBM RT workstations under the UNIX operating system. As Intermedia, it now runs on the Apple Macintosh II microcomputers using Apple's version of UNIX, A/UX. Similar hypermedia projects are being carried out at many other universities. Project Perseus, directed by Professors Gregory Crane and V. Judson Harward of Harvard and Boston Universities, brings together ancient Greek literature, history, maps, digitized images of monuments, vases, and other works of ancient art; a dictionary on-line in the computer; and Morpheus, a program for aiding students in translating ancient Greek (Crane, 8-11; Harward, 16-19). This hypermedia project has been implemented in Apple's HyperCard program. At Stanford University, Professor Larry Frielander is carrying out Project Shakespeare, an ambitious application of hypermedia to the needs of research and instruction in the field of theater (26-29). His students may view computerized text, drawings, still photos,