Information Metaphors.PDF

What I wish to argue firstly in this paper is the hypertext is really an information metaphor, a way of conceiving information. Hypertext belongs to a family of prescriptive information theories. It dictates that information should be constructed in a particular manner. The basic supposition of hypertext is that “everything is intertwingled” and should consequently be linked together to show this relation. It generally conceives information as nodes and link networks forming navigable paths that can be toured, returned to, and referenced. While there are now perhaps millions of instances of hypertext, not any single one of them is the paradigmatic hypertext. I assert that each of the systems we deem hypertext are really just pieces of information which conform to a more general information metaphor, what hypertext really manifests itself as. What we see as we read Nielsen’s “The History of Hypertext” is the evolution of an information theory from its infancy to mature examples.