ABSTRACT

Hypertext systems are emerging as a new class of complex information management systems, which allow people to create, annotate, link together, and share information from a variety of media such as text, graphics, audio, video, animation, and programs; they provide a non-sequential, flexible and entirely new method of accessing information by incorporating the notions of navigation, annotation, and tailored presentation. The metaphor for hypertext should be based on the general cognitive model of complex problems thinking. Hypertext systems should try to exploit the basic nature of human cognition which is essentially organised as a semantic network of concepts linked together by associations,  which allows any individual to adopt the appropriate mental model. This paper attempts to address a fundamental issue in the nature of hypertext, which reflects that there is still much to be done in producing tools for better bridging the gap between the essential fluidity of mental processes and ideas and their external representations.

 KEYWORDS: hypertext, artificial intelligence.