Gradescope: https://www.gradescope.com/courses/1379030/assignments/8791338/
You grew up in the Golden Age of Hypertext: an era of blogs, upvotes, search engines, and admonitions from teachers not to cite Wikipedia. The goal of this assignment is for you to reflect on the hypertextual nature of the software in your life, as well as to see it through the eyes of someone dreaming about hypertext long before it became a reality.
In this assignment, you will read an article by hypertext pioneer Ted Nelson which tries to define what it means to be hypertext, especially in contrast to more mechanical aids to information organization such as document/content retrieval. You will write some short and long responses which connect Nelson’s ideas to the modern day.
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Task 1: Read “Getting It Out Of System” by Ted Nelson. You can find the original scan online, but for maximum legibility, I recommend reading this version which I re-typeset in Typst with AI assistance. (It should be character-identical, but let me know if you spot anything weird.)
Consider trying out a new note-taking software while you’re reading this article, whether that’s LiquidText, Obsidian, or something else!
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Task 2: Create a document where you can write the responses to the questions below.
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Task 3: Reflection questions.
(20 points) Nelson concludes his essay with:
The problem of Getting It Out of Our System, then, is not the problem of fishhook design for a document pool, or of creating a conversational black box with a narrow vocabulary. We must get out of our system the fixities of thinking and procedure that hold us back.
Explain this conclusion in your own words: what “fixities of thinking” were (or still are!) holding us back, in the cases of both information and film? [≤3 paragraphs]
(20 points) Consider Nelson’s taxonomy of text types. For each of the following, describe how/why you would (a) classify it as collection vs. composition, (b) classify it as sequential vs. structural, and (c) describe its connective structure. [1 paragraph per bullet]
(20 points) Read the Principles section of Wikipedia’s “Manual of Style/Linking”. To what extent do you think these principles reflect a use of hypertext as a **medium, in the sense defined by Nelson? To what extent are these principles akin to the rules restricting movie actors to perform as if on a theater stage? [≤3 paragraphs]
(20 points) Give an example of modern resource that is similar to Nelson’s description of the “specialist hypertext,” but which is NOT Wikipedia. Explain how it shares or lacks the characteristics proposed by Nelson. [≤3 paragraphs]
(20 points) Consider how our practices with AI tooling today reflect a “cultural lag” as defined in the article. That is, in what ways has AI been “assimilated” to “continue the things that have been done before”, which we expect might change drastically as our tools mature? Give two examples. [1 paragraph each] </aside>
AI policy reminder: you are not permitted to use AI in any way to complete the assignment. Put another way, no inverse reading on this assignment! We want to read exclusively your original thoughts.
Writing style note: in general, it is better to say less than more. We are looking for substance and depth rather than wordiness or hitting exact paragraph / word counts. If you go a little over or under the recommended limits, that’s fine.