Meaning of hypertext (what is it, concept and definition)

What is Hypertext:

Hypertext is a concept associated with computing. It refers to the system that allows fragments of texts to be linked together, which allows the user to access the information through related items instead of sequentially.

The concept of hypertext was created in the 1960s by the American philosopher and sociologist Theodor Holm Nelson to designate the new non-linear and interactive reading that emerged with computing and the emergence of the internet.

To carry out the hypertext process, the World Wide Web (www) used the HTTP protocol, an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, which in Spanish means Hypertext Transfer Protocol, which consists of a communication protocol between information systems that allows the transfer of dice between computer networks to link HTML pages or web pages and multimedia files.

Example of hypertext. Each link leads to another page, which interrupts the linearity of the reading.

In this sense, we can observe a great difference in reading with respect to printed books, since in them the reading is done sequentially from the beginning to the end, and in the case of hypertexts, users can do it in non-linear way, that is, they can visualize the information without a sequence but following their interests in their search or concept.

From the appearance of computers, the texts acquired a new interactive dynamic according to the speed of the information currently received, being advantageous for the area of ​​education for facilitating understanding and presenting a type of dynamic and interactive narrative.

A notorious example of hypertext are internet articles, which in the body of the text present various links or hypertext links in the words or topics that are related to the main or developing topic, which allows the reader to have a reading more active and choosing the information you prefer to access. We can also mention dictionaries, encyclopedias, among others.

In the field of literature, there are claims by literature theorists that the use of hypertexts is not only used in digital media but can go further, since it was used in the development of some works, in view of the fact that the author offers a non-sequential reading, with links from other stories, excerpts from other authors, etc. For example: Hopscotch of Julio Cortázar.

See also:

• Word Wide Web or WWW.HTML.

Hypertext and hypermedia

The concept of hypermedia was also created by Theodor Holm Nelson and is related to the definition of hypertext, since it corresponds to the fusion of non-sequential and interactive elements. For some scholars, hypertext is a type of hypermedia with the difference that the first one only includes texts while the second one presents images, videos, audio, graphics, for example: social networks, blogs, computer products such as power point or flash, and it is noteworthy the first system related to the Aspen Movie Map hypermedia.