HYPER-

prefix (Science and Technology) In computing jargon: involving complex organization of text or other machine-readable media so that disparate sources are linked together and may be accessed simultaneously. Used especially in: hypermedia, a method of structuring information in different media (text, graphics, sound, etc.) for presentation to an individual user in such a way that related items of information are connected and presented together; hypertext, machine-readable text that does not form a single sequence or come from a single source, but is so structured that related pieces of text can be displayed together. Etymology: The Greek prefix huper- 'above, beyond'; these approaches to machine-readable media go beyond the concept of searchability to present the user with a highly structured and interconnected resource. History and Usage: Hypertext and hypermedia are concepts which computer scientists have been working on since the sixties, but which were perhaps too far ahead of their time to gain much popular currency until the eighties. Then, with the general public becoming increasingly computer-literate and demanding ever more sophisticated sources of information, and the necessary hardware becoming ever cheaper to produce, hypertext and hypermedia (sometimes called multimedia) were presented very much as the next step after the database and the personal computer, CD player, etc. Because different types of data...can be tied together, hypertext and hypermedia are important in multimedia systems, where they can provide an innovative way to navigate the different data on a multimedia system. Daily Telegraph 9 Apr. 1990, p. 29 Two aspects of the Active Book transcend the most useful Filofax: hyperlink and multimedia. Independent 9 Apr. 1990, p. 18