Hypertext Gardens: Delightful Vistas

Added to The Forgotten Web: . Historical publication details follow.

1998 · hypertext / web culture · original online
WhatEssay sequence on designing hypertext places.
Why nowThe web needs paths, texture, and authored places again.
Statusoriginal online
Found inpre-platform culture

Mark Bernstein describes hypertext as a garden: a place of paths, gates, signposts, irregularity, and deliberate surprise. It is web architecture with dirt under its fingernails.

WHY IT STILL MATTERSFeeds made the web feel like a conveyor belt. Bernstein’s garden is the opposite machine: slower, spatial, authored, and built for discovery rather than extraction.
Best opened when the internet starts feeling like a queue instead of a place.
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