stretchtext

This is the paper where Ted Nelson first coined the word hypertext. What follows is the abstract he wrote for the paper:

THE KINDS OF FILE structures required if we are to use the computer for personal files and as an adjunct to creativity are wholly different in character from those customary in business and scientific data processing. They need to provide the capacity for intricate and idiosyncratic arrangements, total modifiability, undecided alternatives, and thorough internal documentation. I want to explain how some ideas developed and what they are. The original problem was to specify a computer system for personal information retrieval and documentation, able to do some rather complicated things in clear and simple ways. In this paper I will explain the original problem. Then I will explain why the problem is not simple, and why the solution (a file structure) must yet be very simple. The file structure suggested here is the Evolutionary List File, to be built of zippered lists. A number of uses will be suggested for such a file, to show the breadth of its potential usefulness. Finally, I want to explain the philosophical implications of this approach for information retrieval and data structure in a changing world.

Seventeen years have passed since Coover's inspiring call to defy the tyranny of the line through hypertext, "where the line in fact does not exist unless one invents and implants it in the text." The profound influence of that clarion shaped the development of electronic literature and attracted the scorn of critics — Sven Birkerts, Laura Miller, Michiko Kakutani – who villified hypertext in defense of the line. Overlooked in the controversy is the embarrassing fact that, even today, we know remarkably little about inventing, implanting, and cultivating the narrative line in its organic richness. We know sequence and rhizome well, but the contours of recursus, timeshift, and renewal remain, for most writers, an arcane craft.

How may we render a satisfactory account of complex events, fictitious or historical? We want hypertext narrative to do things we cannot achieve in print, and though we may occasionally use links or actemes to introduce variation in presentation or in story, it is now clear that hypertext will most frequently prove useful in changing (or adapting) plot.

Stretchtext reacts against the perceived incoherence of hypertext narrative, promising stability and context -- free and knowing navigation -- as a defense against the perceived anarchy of exploratory and constructive hypertexts. Rich stretchtext formalisms are now readily supportable through javascript libraries and AJAXian services, but the narratological restrictions that conventional stretchtext imposes on hypertext narrative have not been fully appreciated. This paper describes those limitations and introduces an implemented generalization of stretchtext that matches the expressive and formal capabilities of classical hypertext systems while appearing to be a conventional stretchtext and while running within the confines of a Web browser.

(Source: Author's abstract for ELO_AI)

Over the past couple decades, as the term "hypertext" has gained a certain popular currency, a question has been raised repeatedly: "What is hypertext?" Our most respected scholars offer a range of different, at times incompatible, answers. This paper argues that our best response to this situation is to adopt the approach taken with other terms that are central to intellectual communities (such as "natural selection," "communism," and "psychoanalysis"), a historical approach. In the case of "hypertext" the term began with Theodor Holm ("Ted") Nelson, and in this paper two of his early publications of "hypertext" are used to determine its initial meaning: the 1965 "A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate" and the 1970 "No More Teachers' Dirty Looks." It is concluded that hypertext began as a term for forms of hypermedia (human-authored media that "branch or perform on request") that operate textually. This runs counter to definitions of hypertext in the literary community that focus solely on the link. It also runs counter to definitions in the research community that privilege tools for knowledge work over media. An inclusive future is envisioned.

Original publication info: Computer Decisions. 1970. Rpt. in Computer Lib/Dream Machines. 1974. Rpt. in The New Media Reader. 2003.