Hypertext and the Mind

Hypertext organizes information much as our minds do. We tend to organize information in nonlinear associations between chunks of information. As we explore a topic we form a cognitive web associating new information to existing information, forming complex interrelationships.

Vannevar Bush, Ted Nelson, and Douglas Engelbart all saw hypertext as modeling and augmenting how the mind organizes information. This is quite opposite to the forced hierarchical linearity of print.

Print forces us to organize information in a way which is not organic, not natural. That we do it as well as we do is more of a comment on the level of intellectual indoctrination we've received over the years, than of any innate superiority of the print paradigm. Certainly, adopting the more organic hypertext paradigm will, as we throw off our print-centered intellectual indoctrination, enable us to operate at a higher level of cognitive efficiency.


WEB Paradigm Why. Media Theory. History and Prehistory Print Paradigm.
Multimedia Paradigm. Hypertext Paradigm. Docuverse Paradigm. Interactive Paradigm. Conclusions