What is hypertext?

Hypertext is a developing technology that can ultimately make people more effective researchers.

Today, people use search engines to find out about almost any information they need. After giving search engines a query term, the hyperlinks that search engines provide tell where the documents are. Then they take users to different sites with the information they are looking for. Hypertext is a structured electronic environment based on information found on World Wide Web browsers. Hypertext, according to Vannevar Bush in the article As We May Think, is “It’s a device in which an individual stores his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.”

Hypertext allows people to become authors of their own information. For example, if someone wants to find information for a paper they turn to a search engine. After being given a set of hypertext, the user chooses which documents they want to use. Anyone else searching for the same information will most likely not use the same sources because there are so many to choose from. Another way people become authors is by the ways that they interpret the information that they find. Hammond and Allison, in their article Efficacy Of a Map On Search, Orientation and Access Behavior In a Hypermedia System, feel that hypertext lets users take control over what they are looking for. This mass amount of uncharted information creates some problems however.

One of the problems is getting lost during a search involving hypertext. This happens due to the environment’s complexity or cognitive overhead. According to Ted Nelson, in the article Ted Nelson and Xanadu, cognitive overhead is, “Additional effort and concentration necessary to maintain several tasks or trails at one time.” People get lost because they don’t know where to go, don’t know how they get to where they want to go, or they don’t know their current position in relation to their subject. This frustration may cause people to stop using search engines. Naturally these problems have a possible solution.

By using spatial metaphors and designing maps, people will be able to make faster and more efficient searches on search engines. Spatial metaphors utilize space and move things around in it based on oral or written directions while organizing larger objects in it. Using maps will make for more efficient use of the researched topic. The following sites http://mappa.mundi.net/maps/maps_022/ and http://www.kitchin.org/atlas/contents.html provide good examples of these types of maps that could be used to make researching much faster and easier. In theory, if search engines could distribute a map, like the ones in the previous examples, then experts and inexperienced users could both find information better.