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1. What Hypertext Is

   Over the past couple decades, as the term "hypertext" has gained a certain popular currency, a question has been raised repeatedly: "What is hypertext?" Our most respected scholars offer a range of different, at times incompatible, answers. This paper argues that our best response to this situation is to adopt the approach taken with other terms that are central to intellectual communities (such as "natural selection," "communism," and "psychoanalysis"), a historical approach. In the case of "hypertext" the term began with Theodor Holm ("Ted") Nelson, and in this paper two of his early publications of "hypertext" are used to determine its initial meaning: the 1965 "A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate" and the 1970 "No More Teachers' Dirty Looks." It is concluded that hypertext began as a term for forms of hypermedia (human-authored media that "branch or perform on request") that operate textually. This runs counter to definitions of hypertext in the literary community that focus solely on the link. It also runs counter to definitions in the research community that privilege tools for knowledge work over media.

   Scott Rettberg - 25.05.2012 - 14:15

2. (R)Evolutionary Communication: Defining and Refining Digital Literature, Art and Storytelling

   As an educator as well as Director of Digital Media Studies at the University of Detroit Mercy, my pedagogical and personal interests lie in how to use media to incorporate inter-disciplinary studies; to use sound, images as well as visual and narrative compositions to communicate multi-dimensional ideas, passions and concepts. In relation to this inter-disciplinary approach, I incorporate the concept of "mixing" to weave together space, design, technology, story-telling and critical discourse. One of the concepts I try to reinforce is that 'space' includes the psychological as well as the physical. In addition, I teach digital media students that "design" is the intentional approach to choreograph the experiential and that digital technology is a tool for exploring these ideas. Accepting this, I challenge the students to consider: how does the user/viewer experience and process the interaction between digital media and the "narrative" of the everyday? 

   Scott Rettberg - 09.01.2013 - 14:35

3. ELIZA Revisited

   This presentation reconsiders one of the most famous works of electronic literature: Joseph Weizenbaum'sEliza/Doctor. Created in the mid-1960s, this conversational character's success led Janet Murray to name Weizenbaum "perhaps the premier" literary artist in the computer medium. Such evaluations, however, don't take into account what happens during the playful engagement that the system's freeform textual interaction encourages: a breakdown that reveals the shape of the underlying processes. An alternative to this is extremely constrained interaction, which can help maintain the illusion. But a more exciting direction is to design processes that reward readers as they are revealed.

   Scott Rettberg - 09.01.2013 - 14:47

4. Storyspace 1

   Storyspace, a hypertext writing environment, has been widely used for writing, reading, and research for nearly fifteen years. The appearance of a new implementation provides a suitable occasion to review the design of Storyspace, both in its historical context and in the context of contemporary research. Of particular interest is the opportunity to examine its use in a variety of published documents, all created within one system, but spanning the most of the history of literary hypertext.

   EDITOR'S NOTE: This paper is interesting for the technical background it provides on many often-analysed works of electronic literature.

   Jill Walker Rettberg - 28.06.2013 - 14:49