The document below was mirrored in whole on 8/29/2000 from Stuaart Moulthrop at
http://raven.ubalt.edu/staff/moulthrop/chrono.html

I have reproduced it here simply so I could highlight passages for our opening discussion.

A Subjective Chronology of Literary Hypertext

Stuart Moulthrop

This is a sketch of developments relating to creative work in hypertext/hypermedia, cybertext, and ergodics. It is cranky, biased, and hobbyhorsical -- nothing like an objective account. The project began as my own mental core dump but has turned into more of a communal basket-weaving session with straws donated by several other inmates.

I do not vouch for accuracy. Disbelieve all the dates. If you have complaints, corrections, queries, or suggestions, send them to 
samoulthrop@ubmail.ubalt.edu.

Anyone looking for more complete accounts of hypertext/cybertext history should consult George Landow's Hypertext 2.0 (Johns Hopkins, 1997), Espen Aarseth's Cybertext (Johns Hopkins, 1997), Silvio Gaggi's From Text to Hypertext (U. Penn. Press, 1997), J. Yellowlees Douglas's The End of Books -- Or Books Without End? U. Michigan Press (2000), or Jay David Bolter's second edition of Writing Space (forthcoming).

Thanks to Espen Aarseth, Mark Bernstein, J. Yellowlees Douglas, Michael Joyce, and Judy Malloy for advice and contributions.

    To begin somewhat arbitrarily...

     

  • 1945: Presidential science advisor Vannevar Bush publishes "As We May Think" in The Atlantic Monthly; the article describes MEMEX, an automated information system for researchers, including facilities for linking, associating, and sharing information; this is considered by some a starting point for hypertext, though the claim is debatable.
  • 1961: Steve Russell's Space War, the first modern computer game, begins to propagate among early interactive computer systems; among other things, this outbreak demonstrates that computers are not just calculating engines.
  • 1963: Douglas Engelbart publishes "A Conceptual Framework for the Augmentation of Man's Intellect"; along with Nelson's books (below), this work launches serious interest in hypertext.
  • 1965-75: Theodor Holm Nelson defines hypertext or "non-sequential writing," working with (among others) Andries Van Dam at Brown University to produce FRESS, the first fully implemented hypertext system; launches Xanadu, the first hypertextual archive and publishing system; and writes Computer Lib/Dream Machines and Literary Machines, which become founding documents of hypertext development.
  • 1966: Julio Cortázar's multi-sequenced novel Rayuela (later published in English as Hopscotch).
  • Fall, 1968: Engelbart demonstrates NLS/AUGMENT, the information management system he designed to implement some of Bush's ideas.
  • 1968: Robert Coover's Pricksongs and Descants.
  • 1973: Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.
  • 1975: Nelson's Computer Lib/Dream Machines.
  • 1975-80: The first popular personal computers are developed.
  • 1976: Don Woods releases his version of Will Crowther's cave simulation Adventure, launching the genre of electronic text adventures.
  • 1977-1990: The Cambridge, Mass. software house Infocom releases Zork!, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and other classic text-adventure games.
  • 1979: Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [the novel].
  • 1981: Vernor Vinge's novella True Names introduces the concept of cyberspace.
  • 1982: Nelson's Literary Machines.
  • 1984: Michael Joyce and Jay David Bolter meet at the Yale Artificial Intelligence Lab and begin work on Storyspace.
  • 1984: William Gibson's Neuromancer.
  • 1984: Rob Swigart publishes Portal as an "interactive novel." A HyperCard version appears in 1988.
  • Winter, 1984: Apple rolls out the Macintosh.
  • 1985: Donna Haraway's "Manifesto for Cyborgs" appears in Socialist Review.
  • 1986: Judy Malloy publishes Uncle Roger , the first of her "narrabase" projects, on the WELL. Uncle Roger was published by Narrabase Press in 1998.
  • 1986: Mark Bernstein begins publishing fiction and non-fiction hypertexts through his software company, Eastgate Systems.
  • 1986: Randall Trigg completes the earliest PhD dissertation on hypertext (University of Maryland); the dissertation was widely influential and is often cited in current literature.
  • 1986-1990: Researchers at Brown University produce Intermedia, a leading second-generation hypermedia system; Intermedia is used extensively by George Landow and other faculty members at Brown; Landow's Dickens Web, a collaborative hypertext built with several generations of students, is later transferred to Storyspace and published by Eastgate.
  • Fall, 1986: Michael Joyce writes afternoon, a story as (among other things) the "test file" for Storyspace.
  • 1987: Steven Levy's Hackers, influential profile of personal computer pioneers.
  • Spring, 1987: Apple Computer releases HyperCard, introducing a generation of computer users to hypermedia.
  • 1987: Amanda Goodenough's "Inigo Gets Out," a children's story created in HyperCard, begins to circulate on diskette; this is perhaps the first graphical hypertext and arguably the first HyperCard narrative; "Inigo" and other Goodenough works are later published on CD-ROM by Voyager.
  • Spring, 1987: Hypertext '87, the first hypertext conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM); papers include George P. Landow's "Rhetoric of Hypertext," and Bolter and Joyce's "Hypertext Narrative"; keynote by Frank Halasz of Xerox proposes the seminal "Seven Issues" for hypertext research; first edition of afternoon is published at the conference by Riverrun Press.
  • 1987-88: J. Yellowlees Douglas and Nancy Kaplan begin using hypertext fictions in undergraduate writing classes at New York University and Cornell, respectively; Joyce, Moulthrop, and John McDaid convene in Kaplan's kitchen and talk for three days.
  • 1987: Greg Crane launches the Perseus Project at Harvard, a HyperCard-based CD-ROM compendium of texts and exhibits to support study of classical civilization.
  • 1989: Abbe Don's We Make Memories, a pioneering hypertexual documentary.
  • 1989: Voyager Company releases CD-ROM companions for classical music (e.g., Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky), featuring HyperCard stacks that refer to an included audio CD.
  • 1989: Milorad Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel in 100,000 Words appears in English translation; the book is read by some as a hypertext-on-paper; Robert Coover reviews it in the New York Times Book Review.
  • 1989: Hypertext '89 (Pittsburgh): Polle Zellweger's paper on paths and guided tours establishes an enduring framework for these topics; Cathy Marshall presents work on the further evolution of Xerox's NoteCards, beginning the move toward "spatial hypertext."
  • 1990: Postmodern Culture, founded by Eyal Amiran, John Unsworth, and others, opens as the first peer-reviewed on-line journal in the humanities.
  • 1990: Sherry Turkle's The Second Self (Touchstone), crucial early study of computer use among children and adolescents; now happily back in print.
  • 1990: First publication of Judy Malloy's Its Name Was Penelope (Narrabase Press); this text was re-published by Eastgate in 1992.
  • 1990: Eastgate publishes afternoon and Storyspace.
  • 1990: Voyager Company publishes its line of "Expanded Books," works by prominent authors (e.g., William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy) re-presented in HyperCard stacks.
  • 1990-91: Tim Berners-Lee creates a workgroup tool and hypertext browser called World Wide Web.
  • Spring, 1991: Special issue of Writing on the Edge devoted to hypertext, featuring essays by Terence Harpold, John McDaid, J. Y. Douglas, Jay David bolter, and original hypertexts by Michael Joyce, Martha Petry, and Carolyn Guyer.
  • 1991: Pat Cadigan's Synners, a novel that describes cyberspace as something other than "bodiless exultation." Change for the machines...
  • 1991: Jay David Bolter's Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing (Lawrence Erlbaum); the book includes a mail-in offer for a Storyspace hypertext on diskette.
  • 1991: J. Yellowlees Douglas's PhD dissertation, "Print Pathways and Electronic Labyrinths" (New York University) is the first devoted to interpretation of hypertext.
  • 1991: Brenda Laurel's Computers as Theater (Addison-Wesley).
  • Fall, 1991: Hypertext '91 (San Antonio); among other notable events at the conference, a panel on "The Status of the Navigation Problem" marks a shift in consensus, as researchers conclude there may be no "problem" after all; Eastgate publishes Moulthrop's Victory Garden.
  • Spring, 1992: Coover's controversial "End of Books" article appears in NYTBR.
  • The first Swedish hypertext novel appears, Karl-Erik Tallmo's Iakttagarens förmĺga att ingripa ("The Watcher's Ability to Interfere"), a HyperCard project. For further information see www.nisus.se/archive/iakttaga.html
  • 1992: Gareth Branwyn and Mark Frauenfelder's Beyond Cyberpunk, a HyperCard-based compendium of cyberpunk and information-age subcultures.
  • 1992: BBC produces a TV documentary called HyperLand, written by Douglas Adams and featuring interviews with Ted Nelson (and voiceovers by Tom Baker, a.k.a. Doctor Who).
  • 1992: In a rare literary foreword, Thomas Pynchon casually drops the term "hypertextualist."
  • 1992: Greg Roach's The Madness of Roland, an early experiment with video in hypermedia.
  • 1992: Voyager publishes its "First Person" line of interactive CD-ROM products, featuring text and video presentations from renowned authors (e.g., Stephen Jay Gould, Marvin Minsky).
  • 1992: George Landow's Hypertext: The Convergence of Critical Theory and Contemporary Technology (Johns Hopkins UP).
  • 1992: Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art explains the structural properties of "sequential art" in ways that clearly connect to hypertext and hypermedia.
  • December, 1992: Wired 1.1.
  • 1993: National Center for Supercomputing Applications releases NCSA Mosaic, the first widely popular HTTP browser.
  • 1993: Italian translation of afternoon by Walter Vannini and Alearda Pandolfi, published by Elettro Libri/Human Systems of Milan along with the first Italian hypertext fiction, Ra-dio, by Lorenzo Miglioli.
  • 1993: Deena Larsen's Marble Springs (Eastgate), perhaps the first hypertextual narrative with a genuine commitment to reader response and expansion; subsequent editions of this HyperCard project are to include materials and links contributed by readers.
  • 1993: Richard Lanham's The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts (U. Chicago Press).
  • 1993: Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.
  • 1993: Carolyn Guyer's Quibbling (Eastgate).
  • 1993: John McDaid's Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse, an "artifactual hypertext" comprising the literary remains of Arthur ("Buddy") Newkirk, work in progress since the mid-eighties, is published by Eastgate.
  • Summer, 1993: Coover's front-page review of hypertext fictions in NYTBR.
  • Spring, 1994: Broderbund publishes the Miller brothers' MYST, the first broadly successful exploratory, graphic hypertext; MYST establishes a sales record for computer games.
  • 1994: Landow's edited collection Hyper/Text/Theory (Johns Hopkins).
  • 1994: Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext begins publication with Jim Rosenberg's "Intergrams," followed shortly by J.Y. Douglas's "I Have Said Nothing" and Mary-Kim Arnold's "Lust."
  • 1994: Mark Taylor and Esa Saarinen's Imagologies (Routledge).
  • 1994: Netscape Navigator Web browser is released.
  • 1994: Kathryn Cramer's "In Small and Large Pieces" appears in Eastgate Quarterly.
  • 1995: "The Spot," a Web-based soap opera, goes into operation.
  • 1995: Poet Robert Kendall begins teaching the first on-line course in hypertext literature through the New School Online.
  • Spring, 1995: Alan Liu's Voice of the Shuttle goes into Web-wide operation, offering links, commentary, and information about humanities resources on the Internet.
  • 1995: Michael Joyce's Of Two Minds: Hypertext Pedagogy and Poetics (U. Michigan Press).
  • 1995: Navigator 1.1 allows us to consider "Web design" not necessarily a contradiction in terms.
  • 1995: Netscape Communications' initial public offering is (briefly) the most lucrative in history.
  • 1995: Sven Birkerts' Gutenberg Elegies (Faber and Faber) launches a major salvo in the book world's initial condemnation of hypertext.
  • 1995: Eastgate publishes David Kolb's Socrates in the Labyrinth, the first concerted attempt to do philosophy in hypertext.
  • 1995: Sun Microsystems announces Java, an object-oriented programming language designed for use on the Internet.
  • Fall, 1995: Carolyn Guyer's sober and critical review of Web-based hypertexts appears in Feed; see http://www.feedmag.com/95.09guyer/95.09guyer.html.
  • Winter, 1996: Barbara Page surveys hypertext work in the context of women's writing in "Women Writers and the Restive Text" (Postmodern Culture 6.2: http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.196/page.196).
  • Winter, 1996: At the Hypertext' 96 conference in Washington, D.C., the first Douglas Engelbart Prize goes to a team of students from Georgia Tech for their work in hypertextual cinema, HyperCafé; Jim Rosenberg delivers a highly influential paper, "The Structure of Hypertext Activity"; Eastgate publishes Judy Malloy and Cathy Marshall's Forward Anywhere.
  • Spring, 1996: Wired magazine predicts the imminent technical and economic collapse of the fledgling Internet business ("Web Wipeout")... though this is the April Fool issue. Half a decade later, who knows...
  • Spring, 1996: Voyager, premier publisher of CD-ROM hypertexts, abandons the field because of flat sales. Founder Bob Stein launches a new venture to create TK3 (toolkit-3), a system for creating interactive content for the Net.
  • 1996: Michael Shumate opens his Hyperizons Web site, indexing hypertexts on- and off-line.
  • 1996: Introduction of scripting and frames in Navigator 2.0 further expands potential for HTTP/HTML as a medium for complex texts.
  • 1996: Eastgate releases Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl and Michael Joyce's Twilight: A Symphony, the most mature and ambitious of the Storyspace fictions.
  • 1996: Jeffrey Nunberg's collection, The Future of the Book (U. California Press).
  • 1996: Sherry Turkle's Life on the Screen (Touchstone) offers an extensive and provocative look at the reception of network information culture.
  • 1996: Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.
  • 1996: John Barth inveighs against hypertext fiction, including afternoon, in Wilson Quarterly; a year or so later he publishes link-based fiction of his own in Atlantic Monthly.
  • Spring, 1997: Wired declares Web browsers obsolete.
  • 1997: Silvio Gaggi's From Text to Hypertext (U. Penn. Press).
  • 1997: Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck (MIT Press).
  • 1997: Steven Johnson's Interface Culture (Harper).
  • 1997: Johndan Johnson-Eilola's Nostalgic Angels (Ablex).
  • 1997: Mark Amerika's hypertext fiction Grammatron.
  • 1997: Espen Aarseth's Cybertext (Johns Hopkins) redefines discussion of electronic creativity, introducing notion of "ergodic" rather than "interactive" texts and building a taxonomy of computer literature that includes computer-generated text, games, and virtual spaces.
  • 1997: Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck (Free Press) presents its own powerful reinterpretation of "interaction" and argues for forms of narrative that are both procedural and improvisational.
  • Summer, 1997: A special issue of Postmodern Culture featuring hypertext fiction and poetry; see the editor's introduction at http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.597/ed-intro.597, as well as Michael Joyce's fiction, "Twelve Blue:" http://raven.ubalt.edu/guests/twelveBlue/, and Gregory Ulmer's response to that text: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.997/ulmer.997.
  • Fall, 1997: N. Katherine Hayles edits a special issue of Modern Fiction Studies on literary hypertext. Elsewhere on this site, see my contribution, "Pushing Back: Living and Writing in Broken Space."
  • Fall, 1997: In a NYTBR column ("The Never-Ending Saga") Michiko Kakutani doesn't manage to name the author of afternoon and avers that hypertext fiction is at best "Myst [sic] or Warcraft II as re-imagined by Robbe Grillet." Well, you know...
  • Fall, 1997: Broderbund publishes the Miller brothers' Riven, a major landmark in hypermedia. In the first two days of release, 80,000 copies are sold.
  • 1998: Douglas Engelbart wins the Turing Award, the Association for Computing Machinery's highest honor.
  • Spring, 1998: The principal writer on the Miller team declares that interactive texts depend too much on the user, don't give the author enough control, and says he will devote future efforts to screenplays.
  • Spring, 1998: Wired sold to Conde Nast.
  • 1998: Norton Anthology of Postmodern Literature appears, including by reference excerpts from afternoon and J.Y. Douglas's "I Have Said Nothing."
  • June, 1998: Hypertext '98 (Pittsburgh): Mark Bernstein's "Patterns of Hypertext" presents an informed and comprehensive rhetoric of hypertext structures; Cathy Marshall wins the second Engelbart Award for groundbreaking work on ethnography of annotation; for what it's worth, see my closing keynote.
  • July, 1998: Salt Hill Review awards its inaugural prize for hypertext literature to Josephine Wilson and Linda Carroli for water always writes in plural;" see http://www.hypertxt.com/sh/hyper98.
  • 1998: High Wired by Cynthia Haynes and Jan Rune Holmevik (Michigan).
  • Fall, 1998: First Digital Art and Culture conference is held at the University of Bergen, Norway.
  • Fall, 1998: Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin's Remediation: Understanding New Media (MIT).
  • Spring, 1999: New York University Press awards its inaugural prize for hypertext fiction.
  • Spring, 1999: The trAce on-line community and Alt-X award their first prizes for hypertext and digital art.
  • April, 1999: Robert Coover hosts Technology Platforms for 12st-Century Literature, a conference on the future of writing and technology.
  • 1999: Marie-Laure Ryan's Cyberspace Textuality (Indiana).
  • 1999: Electronic Literature Organization founded by Scott Rettberg, Jeff Ballowe, and others.
  • Fall, 1999: Second Digital Art and Culture conference is held at Georgia Tech. Nick Montfort publishes Winchester's Nightmare, the first computer fiction whose "hardback" edition includes a laptop computer.
  • Fall, 1999: Ted Nelson begins circulating demo and source code for ZigZag, a radical departure from the stateless, file-based conventions of the World Wide Web.
  • Spring, 2000: The 11th ACM Hypertext conference is held in San Antonio, featuring major theoretical papers by J.Y. Douglas and Rob Kendall and Jean-Hugues Réty. Eastgate publishes M.D. Coverley's Califia.

It may be seen as somewhat ironic that so many of the events [mentioned here] consist of paper publishings.

-- Espen Aarseth