What is Hyperland?
Q: What is Hyperland?
A: Hyperland is a 50-minute long documentary movie about hypertext and surrounding technologies. It was written by Douglas Adams and produced and directed by Max Whitby. It ran on BBC Two in 1990.
Q: Who stars in the show?
A: Douglas Adams stars as a computer user and Tom Baker stars as a personification of a software agent.
Q: What are some of the topics discussed in the show?
A: Vannevar Bush's Memex concept, Ted Nelson's explanation of hypertext and Project Xanadu, Hans Peter Brøndmo's idea of animated icons, Robert Winter's interactive version of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, Kurt Vonnegut's book Palm Sunday stories represented mathematically as graphs, Robert Abel's multimedia version of Picasso’s Guernica, Apple Multimedia Lab employees' multimedia version of Life Story, Amanda Goodenough’s Inigo Gets Out interactive story for children using Hypercard, Brad deGraf and Michael Wahrman’s digital puppet Mike Normal, NASA Ames Research Center scientist’s prototype Virtual Reality helmet called Cyberiad.
Q: When did it air?
A: Hyperland aired on BBC Two in 1990.
Q: How does it relate to modern web technology?
A: Hyperland describes many features that are similar to those found on the modern web even though it predates the public release of the first Web browser by about a year.
Q: Who makes an appearance in the show?
A: Marc Canter makes an appearance as an animated icon that is not "clicked" by Adams; however viewers never get to see his interview.
Q: What is presented at the end of the dream/documentary?
A: At the end of both Adams' dream and documentary there is a vision presented for how information might be accessed in 2005.
