David Millard

This page was created for attendees of the ‘What is Hypertext‘ workshop held at the On the Margins conference on the 15th December 2022. Thanks to everyone who took part in the workshop.

Hypertext is a foundational technology of our modern digital culture. Its history goes back over six decades. In the 60s pioneers such as Doug Engelbart created the very first digital systems such as NLS/Augment and considered hypertext as `augmenting man’s intellect’ and in the 70s and 80s Ted Nelson coined the term Hypertext and first imagined a global system, Xanadu, where text would be interlinked, multi-dimensional, and collaborative. This was followed by a variety of early systems with distinct communities working on hypertext from decidedly different points of view. 

In the last two decades Hypertext has gone feral, democratised and utilised by billions of people through the Web and the explosion of Social Media systems that use it. Over time the term has been subsumed into our culture and might be considered old-fashioned or even historic.

And Yet. Hypertext is a foundational technology of our modern digital culture.

So how much do we understand it, what are its characteristics, how can it be usefully used or applied, and do our modern tools live up to the expectations of those pioneers?

In this creative tutorial we will explore the question ‘What is Hypertext?’ through hands on exploration with three hypertextual tools: 

• Twine, a free tool for creating interactive hypertextual stories
• Obsidian, a free hypertext tool for personal knowledge management
• StoryPlaces, a free tool for creating locative narrative games

Attendees will be invited to reflect on how they see hypertext, choose the tool they are least familiar with for a small hands-on creative project, and then reflect on how this experience has changed this perception. Our goal is to create bridges between the different communities that use hypertext, and to broaden attendees’ notion of what the term means, and how it can be applied to modern technologies.

Resources for the Workshop

We have produced some info below for each tool. We first explain how to get started (download or access the tool) and then point at some online help materials that you will find useful. Finally, we provide a prompts sheet that gives you a few ideas for things that you might like to try in the workshop to get you started with the tool.

Twine

Twine is a web and desktop tool for creating interactive fiction. It is a powerful system that creates complex interconnected stories with adaptive content and links. However, it is also easy to use, and easy to get started with.

Twine is available at twinery.org. You have the option to download the tool on your machine or use it online. Select the option you prefer and follow the instructions until you reach the tool’s main page, once there click on +New to create a story and start writing.

• For help visit https://twinery.org/reference/en/
• Twine Prompts Sheet (ideas of what to do)

Obsidian

Obsidian is a desktop tool for personal knowledge management. It is a personal wiki that stores everything in local markdown files. It’s very extensible and can be very powerful when combined with some of the community plugins that are available, but can also be used out of the box to create hyperlinked notes.

Obsidian is available from obsidian.md. You need to download and install it for your operating system (the link is on the front page, and it is available for both Windows and Mac). When you run it for the first time you need to Create New Vault (a vault is what Obsidian calls a related collection of notes and links). Give your vault a name according to whichever prompt you what to use (for example ‘Journal’); a vault is actually a folder containing markdown files, so make sure you save it in a suitable location.

• Help is available from the main Obsidian website
• Obsidian Prompts Sheet (ideas of what to do)

StoryPlaces

StoryPlaces is a web-based tool that we created at the University of Southampton (as part of the StoryPlaces project) for creating locative narrative games (stories that are read on a smartphone in real locations). It’s a powerful tool that can be used to create complex interactive stories or virtual plays, but is also relatively easy to use to create more simple experiences such as digital tours.

You can visit StoryPlaces.soton.ac.uk to find out more about the original project, but you can access the tool directly using this link. You will need to sign in using a Google account. Click on +New Story at the bottom left of the page to create a story and start writing.

• Help is available on the Toolkit page (user the section Help Guides)
• StoryPlaces Prompts Sheet

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Good luck with the tools, and we hope you have fun creating something hypertextual today!