Hypertext, and how it blows my mind
A new blogger nicknamed “trinx” has no About page but does have a lovely post today about hypertext, enlightenment, and the Web.
Some background serendipity: When I started to read Mark Bernstein’s hypertext article, I quickly realized that I needed some context, so I Googled him. The story he blogged about most recently on his personal webpage, markbernstein.org, was one I had read myself in the Washington Post on Sunday, and had already told several people about because it was so amazing.... What Bernstein blogged about before that was the second book by Rory Stewart, whose first book, The Places In Between, I read and loved pretty recently. I believe Bernstein and/or his colleagues at Eastgate Systems might have had something to do with the first hypertext I ever saw, an amazing collection of linked stories and graphics on Macintosh HD floppies that I sent away for after finding a mail-away card in a Mac magazine in 1990.
Trinx finds Patterns of Hypertext tough going. It is. A better starting point might be Hypertext Gardens, or one of the Lecture Notes.
I think Trinx most likely read Deena Larsen's Marble Springs. If so, he or she will really enjoy Larsen’s collection of hypertext stories, Samplers: Nine Vicious Little Hypertexts.