HyperCool

After the class scavenger hunt last week, I was interested in researching Tim Berners-Lee to see what became of the man who is credited with inventing the World Wide Web. The professor, who also is a knight, was inspired to connect TCP and the domain naming system ideas with an earlier program he created based on hypertext. Once I realized hypertext didn't originate with Berners-Lee, I was distracted enough to change my blog topic after more research on hypertext.

The idea of Hypertext can be traced back to notational methods in early books that let readers know the word or phrase or person is previously referenced or defined somewhere else in the text. In 1945 Vannevar Bush wrote an article in The Atlantic Monthly that envisioned a machine called The Memex, which used layers of microfilm to link stored, compressed information together for users. The machine used trails of branched pages to connect the information together. While The Memex never came into existence, Vannevar's vision of the machine's capabilities heavily influenced the thinking of two developers.

 

The Memex      

Douglas Engelbart and his team at the Stanford Research Institute developed the NLS, which stands for oN-Line System. The systems also included the first mouse and other now-standard technologies. The NLS is important to this discussion because it included the first use of hypertext in the 1960s. Simultaneously, Ted Nelson and Andries Van Damme helped develop the Hypertext Editing System (HES) for Brown University. Implemented in 1968, the system organized data into links and branching text (like The Memex) that could be manipulated by menus and labels.

These two systems, along with some other advanced programming at the time, are a major step in the hypertext evolution to the world wide web of today.

In full disclosure, I initially assumed Vannevar's story to be science fiction along the lines of H.G. Wells or Philip K. Dick. Fictional technology featured in stories decades or centuries ahead of its times always fascinates me, especially technology that is assimilated into everyday life (still waiting on that hoverboard!). While Vannevar's essay was a theory on the pacification powers of information and not a paranoid, post-war sci-fi cautionary tale, the essay's real world implications are no less significant.