Librería Portfolio

'Belinda Barnet has given the world a fine-grain, blow-by-blow report of how hypertext happened, how we blundered to the World Wide Web, and what other things electronic literature might still become.' -Ted Nelson, hypertext pioneer


'This is a fine and important book, the first to capture the rich history of ideas and people that led to the World Wide Web. "Memory Machinesö carefully examines what the key figures were trying to do and judiciously explores what they accomplished and how the systems we now use daily sometimes exceed their dreams and sometimes fall embarrassingly short of their early achievements.' -Mark Bernstein, Chief Scientist, Eastgate Systems

'"Memory Machinesö will appeal to anyone who is curious about the history of computing in general and hypertext in particular. This book is highly recommended for computer science students and for students of history of science and technology, as well as for computing and engineering enthusiasts.' -Stephanie Wical, Online Information Review

This book explores the history of hypertext, an influential concept that forms the underlying structure of the World Wide Web and innumerable software applications. Barnet combines an analysis of contemporary literature with her exclusive interviews with those at the forefront of the hypertext innovation. She tells both the human and the technological story, tracing its path back to an analogue device imagined by Vannevar Bush in 1945, before modern computing had happened.

'Memory Machines' offers an expansive record of hypertext over the last 60 years, pinpointing the major breakthroughs and fundamental flaws in its evolution. Barnet argues that some of the earliest hypertext systems were more richly connected and in some respects more flexible than the Web; this is also a fascinating account of the paths not taken.

Barnet ends the journey through computing history at the birth of mass domesticated hypertext, at the point that it grew out of the university labs and into the Web. And yet she suggests that hypertext may not have completed its evolutionary story, and may still have the capacity to become something different, something much better than it is today.

Readership: This book will appeal to academics in media and communications, cultural studies, computing science, and library and information science.



Table of Contents
Foreword: To Mandelbrot in Heaven - Stuart Moulthrop; Preface; Chapter 1: Technical Evolution; Chapter 2: Memex as an Image of Potentiality; Chapter 3: Augmenting the Intellect: NLS; Chapter 4. The Magical Place of Literary Memory: Xanadu; Chapter 5: Seeing and Making Connections: HES and FRESS; Chapter 6: Machine-Enhanced (Re)minding: The Development of Storyspace; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index