Hypertext

Nelson talks on ‘Hypertext’ as something which is non-sequential writing which means that the text written will not only stay in one place and talks about one thing, instead it will branch out and allow the readers to have a choice just like so many other things in the world do that to us too now. When I first read the title Hypertext my thought immediately went into HTML, the two of them connected in this reading but Nelson is more specific on how hypertext connect to so many other things outside while HTML is a more of a coding program.

Nelson talks on how the computer world and contents differ with prints and books and he feels that with all this new innovations the dark side of incompatibility is inevitable. Nelson said, “These colorful and varied facilities cannot be combined or used at the same time, let alone have their contents displayed side-by-side. No longer on the same shelf, … , used on different computers and stored in different disk.”

I find his quote to be very interesting as it is somewhat true seeing that now almost everyone live with a basic computer literacy, know how to turn on the computer and how to use it and make the best out of it. I guess what he was trying to say was that because now hypertext offer a way to link and reach so many think in just a blink of an eye that information has become too vast and their content is hard to be display together as things just branch out making a larger map and therefore we have a never ending information.

Another thing that I find fascinating is his take and vision on the future saying tat office will be paperless, education will promote initiative and understanding rather than sequence and the possible ‘death’ of book publishing. His vision is something that myself could envision seeing that even now things are starting to shape towards that direction, people reading e-docs rather than book, school starting to change so yes I do believe that all of that is possible but not so in the ‘death’ of book. Why? like Adrian says before that print and network live side by side and although it is easier to have your book in the iPad or laptop nothing beats the feeling to actually read and hold a book in your hand so I will think in the future book will still exist and it will never die as it is also part of our culture and tradition.