It’s been more than five decades since the birth of hypertext and it’s fascinating to see this technology continues to have a significant societal impact in our daily lives.
In 2019, Andries van Dam, professor of computer science and former vice-president for research at Brown University reflected on a half-century of hypertext in his keynote speech at Hypertext conference by demonstrating three systems that have been highlights of his journey in hyperland.
FRESS hypertext system, still running after 50 years, was arguably the first online scholarly community and showcases a database of poetry used by a class of English students in 1976. Second, TAG (Touch Art Gallery) that is used by the Nobel Foundation a few years ago for a traveling exhibition on Alfred Nobel and all the Nobel Laureates, and finally, the more recent hypertext system, DASH.
In this talk, he shares his thoughts on both deliberately designed and unanticipated societal issues of social media that he feels we technologists must urgently help address.
Find the presentation and abstract here: https://sigweb.org/conferences/acm-sigweb-conferences/hypertext/#keynote