Hyper world. Read the following paragraphs and answer the questions

What is hypertext? How is information organized in hypertext?

What is a hypertext link? hypermedia? hyperspace and cyberspace?

How do you understand the expression ‘lost in hyperspace’? Have you ever felt ‘lost’ while surfing the Web?

Do you know any science fiction books) which predicted the appearance of hyperspace?

(a) A technical definition of the World Wide Web is: all the resources and users on the Internet that are using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). A broader definition comes from the organization that Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee helped found, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): "The World Wide Web is the universe of network-accessible information, an embodiment of human knowledge."

(b) Hypertext is the organization of information units into connected associations that a user can choose to make. An instance of such an association is called a link or hypertext link. Hypertext was the main concept that led to the invention of the World Wide Web, which is, after all, nothing more (or less) than an enormous amount of information content connected by an enormous number of hypertext links. The term was first used by Ted Nelson in describing his Xanadu system.

(c) Hypermedia, a term derived from hypertext, extends the notion of the hypertext link to include links among any set of multimedia objects, including sound, motion video, and virtual reality. It can also connote a higher level of user/network interactivity than the interactivity already implicit in hypertext.

(d) Hyperspace is a term that describes the total number of individual locations and all of their interconnections in a hypertext environment. It also connotes a perceived sense of this potentially confusing totality. If you've ever started out somewhere on the World Wide Web and gradually lost the sense that you know where you are going or where you are, you are in the condition known as "lost in hyperspace." (Studies, however, show that the "lost in hyperspace" problem is relatively low on users' lists of "things to improve.") Hyperspace can be considered the hypertextual or architectural aspect of cyberspace, a term that has even richer connotations.

(e) Cyberspace is the total interconnectedness of human beings through computers and telecommunication without regard to physical geography. William Gibson is sometimes credited with inventing or popularizing the term by using it in his novel of 1984, Neuromancer.

2.2 Find the information about how popular programs for accessing the Web – browsers – work. Analyze the options available in this software. Discuss different browsers, their pros and cons.