Memory Machines
Douban
The Evolution of Hypertext
Barnet, Belinda
overview
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 tells both the human and the technological story by weaving together contemporary literature and her exclusive interviews with those at the forefront of hypertext innovation, tracing its evolutionary roots back to the analogue machine imagined by Vannevar Bush in 1945.
contents
‘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 Machines” 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
‘This is well-researched and entertaining story, full of personal anecdotes and memories from the people who built these important early systems.’ ―Professor Dame Wendy Hall FREng, Dean of Physical and Applied Sciences at the University of Southampton
‘Walter Benjamin wrote that “It is not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its light on what is past; rather...what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation. “Memory Machines” is, even for one among its participants, such a constellation of the now.’ ―Michael Joyce, Professor of English at Vassar College, New York