The 50th anniversary of the word 'hypertext'

Laura Hudson 11:00 am Tue Aug 25, 2015

Daniel Rehn/Creative Commons

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first publication of the word "hypertext," Gigaom talks to Ted Nelson, who coined the term and then introduced it in a 1965 paper for the Association for Computing Machinery.

What kind of reaction did you get from others?

No one, absolutely no one that I met, could imagine interactive computer screens. Whereas I could see them with my eyes closed, practically touch them and make them respond. It was very sensual.

And all during the 1960s and 1970s I was trying to tell people what interactive screens would be like, in my writings and my talks. But no one got it.

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