HyperCard

A long time ago, and in what may seem to some as a galaxy far,far away, there was no web and no way of traversing resources via hyperlinks. In that time the PC was just taking off and most of us were lucky if we shared a computer with less than 5 people at a time! Back then I shared one of the original classic Macs and came across this wonderful piece of software that was to change the way I thought about the world. HyperCard was something I started to play with just because it was there and really for no other reason, but it quickly became apparent that its core approach of hypermedia was different and compelling. These days I can't recall all of the ways in which I used HyperCard, but I do remember that a few of them helped me in my roleplaying endeavours at the time (ok not exactly work related but sometimes you learn by doing, no matter what it is that you are doing!)

When the Web came along it seemed so obvious the way that it worked. Hyperlinks between resources, whether they're database records (cards) or servers, makes a lot of sense for certain types of application. But extending it to a world wide mesh of disparate resources was a brilliant leap. I'm sure that HyperCard influenced the Web as it influenced several generations of developers. But I'm surprised with myself that I'd forgotten about it over the years. In fact it wasn't until the other day, when I was passing a shop window that happened to have an old Mac in it running HyperCard, that I remembered. It's over 20 years since those days, but we're all living under its influence.