Hypertext pioneer and idealist, Theodor Nelson envisaged hypertext as a means to ‘return to literacy, a cure for television stupor, a new Renaissance of ideas and general understanding, a grand posterity that does not loose the details which are the final substance of everything.’ (1) What then is the relationship and significance of internet sites that are developed as accompanying sites to television series’? Is the history dealt with and presented in a way that indicates a different forum for researching, teaching and learning, or has the internet become an extension of television?
 
 
History and Hypertext: the role of the narrative
In examining the possibilities of hypertextual history it is important to determine what role narrative plays. As theorist Paul Ricoeur, asks, is history a construction and ordering of fragmented, empirical facts, presented via a narrative tale? This in turn then raises the question; can the narrative structures of the tale be removed without it ceasing to be history? (2) Thus, what are the implications of a hypertextual history, in the true sense of hypertext? History after all rarely has one simple linear narrative; it is made up of a mass of unpredictable perhaps sometimes even contradictory details, which is complementary to a non-linear hypertextual history. How possible is it to deconstruct the linear narrative and still maintain the paradigms of storytelling, the expression of human time, a production and creation of meaning that are so intrinsic to history as we know it today? (3)  Hypertext and the internet offer the possibility to escape the classic simplification of history, as films, television and novels often do. In an effort to become interdisciplinary and embrace the internet, two American television networks, CNN and PBS have both developed large American history components on their sites, linked to television series’ that the network have run. However, disappointingly, both CNN and PBS, instead of taking the opportunity to embrace hypertext and utilise its potential, have transplanted television narrative forms and presentation onto the web. Randy Bass suggests that one of the three essential features for a hypertextual, hyper-media site is multiplicity, the capacity to allow texts and narratives to replace one another, while still creating a site with content and ideas that move toward something. Although perhaps not necessarily entirely reaching it, the sense of argument and continuity between the multiple, non-linear narratives is essential in order to create scholarly discourses in a hypertextual setting. (4)The CNN and PBS sites have yet to effectuate this balance, these non-linear narratives which build upon and probe each other. The lack of argument and continuity between elements of the site results in a lack of discourse, merely an encyclopedic blurb about events with primary document attachments left in isolation.

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