The web killed hypertext

👤 Paul Kinlan
📅
🌐 HTML
"Tinderbox has its legacy in the hypertext world, a once rich community of researchers who were exploring how computing could free us from the limits of linear narrative. Unfortunately, the web came along and pulled the energy out of that vision because links conceived more broadly than ‘go’ were essential for hypertext. Tinderbox is less constrained by the constraints of this web thinking than other environments, at least before you export to html."
- https://blog.tedgoranson.com/personal/blog_architecture.html - 2011

Firstly, why does Chrome on Android not support creating Text Fragment links? I'd like to be able to send you directly to that paragraph.

Secondly, the more I explore the concept of hyperlinks and hypertext, the more I think we missed a huge opportunity on the web, especially as we chased the capabilities of native platforms we lost the differentiating factor that hypertext and the web offers. The last thing to change the concept of the link was text fragments, and that's a bit sad.