Interview wtth inventor of hypercard Bill Atkinson

Alejandro Tejada capellan2000 at gmail.com
Fri Oct 20 14:20:10 EDT 2017


Hi All,

Being English my second language, frequently I have to
read again (and reread some time after) many of the
messages that I post in the mail list and in the forum.

In the forum, we could simply edit, reedit and edit again
any message until it means what we meant... but in the
mail list that is not possible.

After reading again my message about the origin of HyperCard,
I found that it's easy, very easy, to understand that in my
message I am dismissing Bill Atkinson's breakthrough as
an intentional copy of previous works.

That was NOT my intention. If Bill Atkinson says the he
invented HyperCard under the effects of LSD, then we have
to believe him... but when you read about any topic, it's logical
and necessary to learn and analyze other people's opinions.

I already written about Walter Cooke and Paul Helckel opinions,
so here is my own opinion:

HyperCard was so successful as an innovative breakthrough
because it followed the natural path of technological
progress. Hypercard was the next step in
computer advancement.

Who is credited with the conceptual foundation of HyperText?
Vannevar Bush with his description of the "Memex":
http://www.archivejournal.net/notes/as-we-may-now-think/

While Vannever Bush described a mechanical device,
electronic engineers where already creating the foundations
of computer science and demonstrating that numbers could
represent and store texts, images and sounds:
http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/04/08/the-history-of-computer-data-storage-in-pictures/

After the creation of text-only hypertext systems,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext
Which was the next logical step in technological
progress?

The creation of an Image and Text hypertext system.
On Macintosh, it's name was HyperCard.

Al



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