Hypermedia : Encyclopedia of New Media

The term hypermedia refers to a nonlinear way of organizing and presenting information in multiple media. The design of hypermedia offers challenges to technical developers, and hypermedia applications have aroused great interest among educational and information designers, as well as artists of various kinds.

Hypermedia are often introduced as more “interactive” ways of engaging media than the more “passive” methods such as reading books or watching television. The consumer of hypermedia material may decide what to read or watch by following links, or may cause things to happen by interacting with programs. Hypermedia also offer the opportunity for people to write parts of stories, then leave an open ending for others to fill in. This kind of interaction is not easily performed in media that are more “static” and difficult (or impossible) to change or that demand greater-than-average technical skills. Most people can write a piece of text, or select pictures among a database of clip-art; thus, hypermedia offer the opportunity to interact with the material given, and to create new material that may be used by other people.

THE EVOLUTION OF HYPERMEDIA

The “father” of hypermedia, at least on a technical level, is usually thought to be Vannevar Bush (1890–1974). In 1932, he started developing ideas for a system later called the Memex (memory extender). Two important concepts were involved: the recording of individual, independent pieces of information, and the linking of these pieces that would make it possible to retrieve records very quickly by going from one to the next. For scientists, this storage and linkage system would solve the problem of keeping track of and retrieving an exponentially increasing amount of information.

The idea of linking information to a text is very old, and is most notably employed through use of footnotes and indexes in books and other printed materials. In addition, dictionary and encyclopedia readers have learned to read short pieces of information independent of other items, and to find relevant references within these short pieces.

The idea of “hypertext” can extend beyond footnotes, indices, and dictionaries, enabling readers to read and follow a story in a non-sequential manner. This idea was realized in books written with forking paths, which allow readers to decide which path to follow, and thereby decide what will happen next in the narrative. This type of hypernovel required a lot of turning of pages, and did not become particularly popular. However, when computers enabled readers to read books via computers, it became easier to “turn the pages,” and alternate paths began to be designed for computers rather than for books. The idea of links between parts is also an essential concept for the design of computer games; a quick transition between images is needed to maintain the illusion of changes in a stable world.

The first computer applications prioritized text over pictures. Word processors as well as databases and administration systems primarily needed text and numbers. The ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) code provided a means by which computers could translate binary symbols into letters and numbers, but there was no way of easily working with graphics in the early days of computing. Creative visual artists found ways to generate graphical representations using ASCII, creating a genre known as ASCII art.

In 2002, multimedia is commonplace in computer applications, and encompasses everything from a simple combination of text and pictures to complex movies and Web sites. The term multimedia is also used in various computer and non-computer contexts: in information provision, educational demonstrations and simulations; in entertainment; and in advertising and other business applications. The most far-reaching place for multi- and hypermedia nowadays is the World Wide Web.

OPPORTUNITIES AND DIFFICULTIES WITH HYPERMEDIA

Artists using new media, as well as computer programmers and other technologists, tend to see hyper-media as a great advance compared to sequential text and ordinary databases. This may be the case when a fairly constricted set of information is concerned. However, as soon as a wide range of information is covered, difficulties arise with both constructing (authoring) and navigating the hypermedia. Tools have been developed to support both authoring and navigating (e.g., browsers or search engines) but both tasks still present hurdles.

For authoring, it is difficult to imagine pieces of information that are independent of one another. No criminal novel would be interesting if you could, without any limit, discover the clues of the story or find the criminal, nor would a love story be interesting if you examined the problems last and the happy ending first. Where presentation systems are concerned, we have seen a change from support systems that allow total freedom of sequencing (such as the Macintosh HyperCard system) to systems that support a sequential presentation (such as the Microsoft Powerpoint system). Nowadays, most custom-made presentations are sequential, or at best incorporate very few forking paths.

When navigating a hypertext such as might be found on the Web, difficulties may arise. Without a proper map, readers tend to get lost. Of course, it is impossible to create a map of the Web itself, where people all over the world freely input and remove information every minute without any (or at least very little) consideration of already existing information.

As for multimedia, it is often considered by nature to be better than any single medium; “the more, the better.” Some designers also seem to think that the closer a piece of information gets to reality, the better human beings understand that information. However, it is quite easy to see that a “smart” rendering of information for some purposes is far better than a mirroring of reality. It is easier to understand anatomy from a model of a human body, for instance, than from a dissection. Most researchers aim at presenting their information in condensed visual overviews. There is at present a great stress on “information visualization,” where various ways of presenting information in smart ways are tested.

The future of hypermedia is bright. Creators are starting to understand what restrictions must be placed upon their creation, both in terms of the structure and the presentation of information. Increasingly, new applications are being developed. Still, the entangled nature of the “hyper” portion of hypermedia may be the greatest hurdle to any further development.

Currently, hypermedia applications are becoming more specialized to fit the different needs of cultural development, entertainment, and information provision; a flood of new applications that aim at providing a sensory experience is being created. In the future, hypermedia will not be confined to the computer screen; applications embedded in our ordinary environment, in clothes as well as furniture, are already being developed.

—Yvonne Waern

Entry Citation:

Waern, Yvonne. "Hypermedia." Encyclopedia of New Media. 2002. SAGE Publications. 4 Apr. 2010. .