''Hyperland'' is a 50-minute-long documentary film about

hypertext Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references ( hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically ...

and surrounding technologies. It was written by

Douglas Adams Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author and screenwriter, best known for ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Originally a 1978 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series), BBC radio comedy, ''The H ...

and produced and directed by Max Whitby for

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream a ...

in 1990. It stars Douglas Adams as a computer user and

Tom Baker Thomas Stewart Baker (born 20 January 1934) is an English actor and writer. He is well known for his portrayal of the fourth incarnation of the Doctor in the science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'' from 1974 to 1981.Scott, Danny. (1 ...

, with whom Adams had already worked on ''

Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the ...

'', as a personification of a

software agent In computer science, a software agent or software AI is a computer program that acts for a user or other program in a relationship of agency, which derives from the Latin ''agere'' (to do): an agreement to act on one's behalf. Such "action on beha ...

. In hindsight, what ''Hyperland'' describes and predicts is an approximation of today's

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

Content

The self-proclaimed "fantasy documentary" begins with Adams asleep by the fireside with his television still on. In a dream that follows, Adams, fed up by game shows and generally passive, non-interactive linear content, takes his TV to a rubbish dump, where he meets Tom, played by Tom Baker. Tom is a

, who shows him the future of TV: ''interactive multimedia''. Much like

Apple Inc Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

Knowledge Navigator The Knowledge Navigator is a concept described by former Apple Computer CEO John Sculley in his 1987 book, ''Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple''. It describes a device that can access a large networked database of hypertext information, and use software ...

concept, Tom acts as a butler within a virtual space populated with

hypermedia Hypermedia, an extension of the term hypertext, is a nonlinear medium of information that includes graphics, audio, video, plain text and hyperlinks. This designation contrasts with the broader term ''multimedia'', which may include non-interacti ...

: linked text, sound, pictures and movies represented by animated icons. The documentary is centred on Adams browsing these media and discovering their interconnectedness. This process leads him, for example, from the topic ''Atlantic Ocean'' to ''literature about the sea'' to ''

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' (originally ''The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere'') is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–1798 and published in 1798 in the first edition of '' Lyrical Ball ...

'' by

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lak ...

to the poem ''

Kubla Khan ''Kubla Khan'' () is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. It is sometimes given the subtitles "A Vision in a Dream" and "A Fragment." According to Coleridge's preface to ''Kubla Khan'', the poe ...

'' by the same author to '' Xanadu'' and back to the topic of hypertext via

Ted Nelson Theodor Holm Nelson (born June 17, 1937) is an American pioneer of information technology, philosopher, and sociologist. He coined the terms ''hypertext'' and '' hypermedia'' in 1963 and published them in 1965. Nelson coined the terms '' trans ...

's '' Project Xanadu''. The references to Coleridge and to Kubla Khan are rather knowing nods to Adams' own book ''

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency ''Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency'' is a humorous detective novel by English writer Douglas Adams, published in 1987. It is described by the author on its cover as a "thumping good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic- ...

'', where they play significant roles in the plot. ''Dirk Gently'' was published in 1987 and also touches on the themes of interconnectedness, suggesting that this was a subject Adams had thought about at some length and for some time. Many aspects of the documentary demonstrate Adams' noted enthusiasm for technology, and for

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...

computers in particular. At the beginning of the documentary a

Macintosh Portable Macintosh Portable is a laptop designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from September 1989 to October 1991. It is the first battery-powered Macintosh, which garnered significant excitement from critics, but sales to customers w ...

can be seen, and most of the projects presented run on Apple hardware. Even the general design of the animated icons and environments featured in his dream are inspired by pre-OS X era

Mac OS Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the "Classic" Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system, rebranded "M ...

icons and design cues.

Multimedia

While Adams is browsing, many people and projects related to the general theme of hypertext and

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

are presented: *

Vannevar Bush Vannevar Bush ( ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all warti ...

and his

Memex Memex is a hypothetical electromechanical device for interacting with microform documents and described in Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think". Bush envisioned the memex as a device in which individuals would compress and store all of ...

concept of a theoretical proto-hypertext information system are shown. *

explains

and Project Xanadu. * Hans Peter Brøndmo talks about the concept of animated navigation icons, which he calls ''Micons''. * Robert Winter talks about an interactive version of

Beethoven's 9th Symphony The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is a choral symphony, the final complete symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven, composed between 1822 and 1824. It was first performed in Vienna on 7 May 1824. The symphony is regarded by many critics and music ...

. * An idea from

Kurt Vonnegut Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and ...

's book ''Palm Sunday'' is presented: stories and narrative structures have shapes that can be represented mathematically as graphs. * Robert Abel shows his multimedia version of

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

's ''

Guernica Guernica (, ), official name (reflecting the Basque language) Gernika (), is a town in the province of Biscay, in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, Spain. The town of Guernica is one part (along with neighbouring Lumo) of the m ...

''. * Apple Multimedia Lab employees Steve Gano, Kristee Kreitman, Kristina Hooper, Michael Naimark and Fabrice Florin talk about a multimedia version of ''

Life Story Life story work is a social work intervention with children and adults designed to recognise their past, present, and future. It is prominently used with children who will be adopted, and older adults as part of reminiscence therapies. Life stor ...

'', a BBC TV film dramatisation of the 1953 discovery of the structure of DNA. * Amanda Goodenough presents ''Inigo Gets Out'', an interactive story for children implemented with

Hypercard HyperCard is a software application and development kit for Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers. It is among the first successful hypermedia systems predating the World Wide Web. HyperCard combines a flat-file database with a graphical, f ...

. * Brad deGraf and Michael Wahrman talk about their digital puppet ''Mike Normal''. * A

NASA Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) labora ...

scientist presents a prototype

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), edu ...

helmet called ''Cyberiad''. *

Marc Canter Marc Canter is an American internet entrepreneur, speaker, technology evangelist and early pioneer of online software,LEFLER, LUKE (2015)The New Stack Makers: Marc Canter and the Days Before Macromedia — Part One". ''The New Stack''. Retrieved ...

makes a cameo (non-)appearance as an animated icon that isn't "clicked" by Adams; no interview with Canter is shown. The dream (and the documentary) ends with a vision of how information might be accessed in 2005. In hindsight, ''Hyperland'' does describe a number of features of the modern web and, apart from some underestimates of graphics and processing power available, the documentary paints a not inaccurate picture of hypermedia and

and how they are used today. This is especially noteworthy considering that it predates the public release of the first Web browser by about a year.

References

External links

Douglas Adams Homepage about ''Hyperland''

Watch and download ''Hyperland'' at the Internet Archive.
* {{Douglas Adams BBC television documentaries Hypertext Electronic literature Films about virtual reality Multimedia Television episodes written by Douglas Adams 1990 television specials Documentary films about the Internet