Hypertext

This 1994 essay gave me a large number of unexpected benefits. I think it was the right message in the right place at the right time, posted online, free. First, it was translated into half a dozen languages. It was later anthologized.

But best, a librarian at the Univ of NC, starting a new online library, Ibiblio, read it and admired it so much she offered me free electronic space to archive my work, past and future, particularly helpful for video, which I was getting into. My archive still exists there, some twenty years later. A godsend, really. I owe a great debt to her.

 WHAT IS HYPERTEXT?

        On a winter day in 1985, I was sitting in front of

my CPM Kaypro 2x computer, staring at the blinking green

cursor, unable to begin writing.  I was not a writer who

had experienced "writer's block," and so this was a new

experience for me - and yet it wasn't really writer's block

that kept me from beginning.  It was a nagging question that

on the surface was embarrassingly ordinary.  How could I be

"stuck" over such a simple problem?

        But on this wintry day, as the green cursor blinked

on and on, the ordinary question sounded profound, baffling,

strange:

        How was I going to number the pages of this new

script I was about to begin?

Read it.