Lynn had reason to return to her dissertation: "A Reader-Response Analysis of Hypermedia" (1992). That got me to thinking. I thought of that guy who was surprised to find he had been speaking prose all his life. Google says he was "The Bourgeois Gentleman" in Moliere's play (1670). I read a long time back that the inventive mind of Vannevar Bush proposed something like the idea in the 1940's.
Today, we are used to the idea that "clicking on", or tapping or double tapping a word can "bring up" something, like an explanation of what we tapped or a related document or picture or video. I send out this blog using Gmail and sometimes a given post has been "bounced" or rejected by various filters, machines or software put in place to reduce unwanted messages. It can be bothersome to find dozens of bounced messages so I haven't tested out what can and can't pass muster. I suspect that a hyperlink that says "CBS news" but leads to the American Red Cross is a no-no. The usual hyperlink is a request to a computer or set of them to send a file to my machine. If that file is engineered to deliver malicious or damaging directions, I want it blocked.
I think that Google and other computing forces try to find, block, disable misleading stuff. But I think there are various people around the world playing or seriously trying to profit by sending me files I don't want.
The practice of making symbols themselves switches that do things reminds me of "rebus" text where little pictures are used sometimes instead of words. I might insert a picture of a cat instead of using the letters. I wasn't sure that "rebus" is used to refer to such text but Google search results say the idea goes back to the middle ages.
I am confident that many people, not just youngsters, would be surprised that they know how to use hypertext without having heard the word. Many orderly types of people assume that we first learn the name of something and then learn what it is. Often, in school or in an orderly introduction, we do. But we are engaged in many things throughout a day without a vocabulary, especially not a workman's vocabulary, for each action or device. To a certain extent, I can use my body without knowing the typically used names for my bones, muscles and organs.
