Caffeinate Your Hypertext

I once asked a wise programmer for the definition of hypertext. The programmer sighed.

"That's a hard one," he replied. "Ask me something simple next time, like the definition of love." He folded his hands and meditated for hours. Then he spoke. This is what he said:

"Hypertext? It's just text on caffeine. Lots of it. That's why it's hyper, you see."

"Smart aleck," I retorted and left.

How did you learn to create Web pages? No, not HTML -- the pages themselves. I don't know when I learned hypertext. Until recently, I didn't even think of my writing as hypertext. I was just putting stuff on pages. Then one day, I wrote a filler paragraph. It wasn't anything special, but my client loved it. The paragraph looked something like this:

In this article, "Caffeinate Your Hypertext," I suggest that knowing how to create a Web page is only a small step toward writing good hypertext. The article is the first installment in a two-part series on hypertext for anyone who writes anything for the Web. In a world where designers create systems to offload work to secretaries and writers, both technical and non-technical people need a sense of the possibilities opened up by hypertext. This article will look at key issues in hypertext authoring, point out some common, fun, and interesting examples, and finish up with a bucket of questions and ideas. The second article will look at some technologies that make hypertext easier to understand, write, and publish. If you're interested in Wikis or Content Management Systems, the second article is for you.

My paragraph was just a normal paragraph with a few links thrown into the sentences. This is not a new technique. I have seen it used on many pages; blog writers often use this very technique. Yet my client had never thought of writing in this way -- it was a revelation for both of us.

I realized that the wise programmer was right. Take a single serving of text, add the caffeine of hyperlinks, and the now-stimulated paragraph works better than a normal paragraph. But just like caffeine, using hypertext can have side effects. Nobody wants an over-caffeinated kid running around, destroying everything in sight.

I needed to find out how this electronic caffeine works if I was going to use it to my best advantage. I went to Tibet and meditated for thirty years. Here's what I discovered.