eLearningIndustry_Logo
Sign In
  • Join Newsletter
  • eBooks
  • Webinars
  • Find Top LMS Software
  • Find Top Authoring Tools
  • Find Top Content Providers
  • Advertise
  • Articles
    All Articles Publish an Article Learning Management Systems Authoring Tools Trends Design and Development Instructional Design Best Practices Free Resources
  • Directory
    Pick The Right eLearning Partner Content Providers Learning Management Systems Free LMS Consulting Review an LMS Promote Your LMS Authoring Tools Review an Authoring Tool Promote Your Authoring Tool Web Conferencing Software Project Management Software Course Marketplaces Language Providers Translation Providers Voice Actors Top eLearning Companies Registration
  • Events
    Webinars Promote Your Event All Events Conferences Congresses Events Seminars Symposiums Workshops Promoting Your Event Guide Free eBook
  • Press Releases
    Promote Your Press Release Press Releases Archive Press Release Guidelines Press Releases Guide Free eBook
  • Jobs
    Find Jobs Promote Your Job
  • Post Here

How can we help you?

Loading...
Oups. Something Has Gone Terribly Wrong. Please Try Later

Sign In

By signing in with LinkedIn, you're agreeing to create an account at elearningindustry.com and accept our terms of use and privacy policy.
Learn more about how we use LinkedIn.

How we use LinkedIn

We use LinkedIn to ensure that our users are real professionals who contribute and share reliable content.

When you sign in with LinkedIn, you are granting elearningindustry.com access to your LinkedIn account, which is used to authenticate you without you having to enter a different user name and password. We also use this access to retrieve the following information:

  • Your full name.
  • Your primary email address.

You can revoke this access at any time through your LinkedIn account.

Sign In with LinkedIn

Already have an account? Login here
  1. Home
  2. Educational Technology
  3. From Memex To HyperCard
Photo of Bill Ferster
By Bill Ferster
February 1, 2017
3 minutes to read
Comments
Educational Technology

From Memex To HyperCard

HyperCard was an important tool for eLearning at the birth of the Apple Macintosh computer. But before there was HyperCard, there was Vannevar Bush’s Memex.
From Memex To HyperCard
Full-size model of Vannevar Bush's memex made in 2014 by Trevor F. Smith and Sparks Web

The Memex Of Vannevar Bush

We all take it for granted that clicking on an underlined word on a web page will magically transport us to a new site on the internet almost instantly, but the concept of hyperlinking had a legacy well dating decades earlier. In July of 1945, Bush wrote an essay for the well-respected literary magazine The Atlantic Monthly which inspired and resonated with innovators for decades after it was first published. “As We May Think” sounded the opening salvo in a new way of looking at navigating through the large bodies of knowledge people were generating. Bush believed knowledge was coming in at such a great pace that no individual could not absorb, much less remember very much of it. He noted that although this ever-increasing degree of specialization was necessary for progress, but it made any possible connections between disciplines superficial, at best. And he believed that technology could help. Based on his work with analog computers in the 1930s he envisioned a machine, which he named the “Memex”, which could store and instantly retrieve vast amounts of information by a knowledge worker seated at a large desk.

The user of the Memex could instantly browse through an almost unlimited number of articles. The Memex user could then connect an item on one screen to another, creating a permanent “link” between their labels. The ideas of links and trails provided the fundamental inspiration for the kind of hypertext linking used to navigate sites on the internet a half century later.

Apple’s HyperCard

There probably has not been a more enabling piece of software supporting instructional media than Apple's HyperCard. It was the incarnation of Vannevar Bush's Memex and a more practical, albeit less ambitious, embodiment of Ted Nelson's Xanadu hypertext system--with a bit of Douglas Engelbart's innovative sense of inventive engineering thrown in for good measure.

What is most important about HyperCard is that people used it. HyperCard enabled non-technical people to create original solutions that led the world to truly understand the value of the nonlinear, linked world that would come to represent the World Wide Web a decade later.

Apple wunderkind Bill Atkinson developed HyperCard (Initially called “WildCard”) as a side project at Apple after the release of the Macintosh in 1984. He described HyperCard "Simply put, HyperCard is a software erector set that lets non-programmers put together interactive information ... We use cards that contain graphics and text and buttons ... the cards are grouped together in stacks and you can organize it so that any card can jump to any other card. ... The freedom to organize the information according to how things are associated with one another. ... Cards can contain both information and interaction. That's sorta what's new here."[1]

Using HyperCard, you didn't need to be a programmer to create compelling and powerful entertainment and instructional content. It was truly enabling. HyperCard also prepared a whole generation of developers and computer users to become familiar with the ideas of hypertext and linking that formed the foundation of the World Wide Web. Atkinson had some misgivings about not realizing how close HyperCard was to what the Web became. In 2002 he mused "I have realized over time that I missed the mark with HyperCard. I grew up in a box-centric culture at Apple. If I'd grown up in a network-centric culture, like Sun, HyperCard might have been the first Web browser. I thought everyone connected was a pipe dream. Boy, was I wrong. I missed that one."[2]

Vannevar Bush’s 1945 Atlantic essay inspired a number of innovations that operationalized this idea of being able to dynamically link portions of content in a nonlinear fashion that was closer to how he envisioned we really think- associatively, rather than in a fixed path. Bush’s ideas were refined and extended by Ted Nelson’s work with Hypertext and they inspired the networked view of the world we now use daily on the World Wide Web. Douglas Engelbart’s pioneering work on the mouse-driven windowed computer interface made it possible for Bill Atkinson’s HyperCard authoring system to allow non-programmers the ability to craft sophisticated nonlinear learning environments that made individualized learning on the computer significantly easier to deliver.

 

Footnotes:

  1. Atkinson, B. (1987). Introduction to HyperCard. Computer Chronicles. [Television broadcast]. Sausalito, CA: Steward Cheifet Productions.
  2. Kahney, L. (August 14, 2002). HyperCard: What could have been. Wired Magazine.

 

Excerpted From Sage on the Screen: Education, media, and how we learn by Bill Ferster. Johns Hopkins University Press, 201

Educational Technology Tools eLearning Software Instructional Design Best Practices
  • Write or read Comments
Close
Subscribe to the newsletter Subscribe to the newsletter
eLearningIndustry_Logo
The best collection of eLearning articles, eLearning concepts, eLearning software, and eLearning resources.
  • Articles

    • Post Here
    • Top eLearning Authors
    • How To Publish An eLearning Article
    • How to View your Stats
    • Archive
  • Press Releases

    • Promote Your Press Release
    • Press Releases Guide eBook
    • How To Post A Press Release
    • Guidelines
    • Archive
  • Events

    • Promote Your Event
    • Promoting Your Event eBook
    • How To Post An Event
    • Archive
  • Directory

    • Get Listed
    • Top LMS Software
    • Free LMS Consulting
    • Top Authoring Tools
    • Top eLearning Content Providers
    • How to Create a Business Listing
    • How to Create a Product Listing
  • Jobs

    • Promote Your Job
    • How To Post And Manage A Job Listing
    • Job Openings
    • About
    • Terms & Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact
    • Support
    • Advertise
  • French flag ELEARNING INDUSTRY IN FRENCH
© 2011–2019 eLearning Industry.