Stephen E. Dinehart's IMD Blog

After all this talk of Hypertext, I thought it would be good to publish some of my thoughts on the subject. I think that the idea that a user must “click around” to navigate a hypertext is foolish. The option is always there but is by no means a requirement. I believe hyperlinks are intended not a as a must for the viewer/user but as a way of escaping the linearity of traditional literary structures. So for instance in this passage from the Tao Te Ching:

”道可道、非常道。名可名、非常名無名天地之始有名萬物之母。故常無欲以觀其妙、常有欲以觀其徴。此兩者同出而異名。同謂之玄。玄之又玄、衆妙之門。
The Tao that can be followed is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the origin of heaven and earth”

One could further dive into the definitions of “Tao”, “heaven and earth”, etc. if curiosity brought them to it, by selecting the hyperlink that represents that word.
I think that requiring a user to navigate is just as much of a trap as confining them to the world of linearity. The idea is to provide both.

Although I’ve never spoken to Ted Nelson on the subject I believe his vision was one in which all text would be “Hyper” not just a few given words. So that once something like Xanadu was built it would be a deep hypertext that allowed the viewer/user to find out about anything about the text, video, etc. It would allow for the kind of reading/writing that represents our flow of consciousness much better then traditional linear forms of reading and writing. Satisfying the creative impulse seemed to be the aim of hypertext, so that a reading might be better represented by a stream of meandering thought.

I believe that Nelson intended hypertext as a method to navigate through hypermedia, so that all of our media becomes intertwined, and navigable.