The Beginning of Theory and Practice of New Media: Alan Kay’s and Ted Nelson’s Projects

The article elucidates the conceptual context of new media occurrence. Initially, the idea of a personal computer contained a concept of media, which was serving as a guideline in PC development. Having this considered, the research focuses on Alan Kay’s and Ted Nelson’s key ideas of (1) turning a computer into a personal meta-medium due to a user interface and (2) the idea of hypertext. Alan Kay considers media as a driving change for developing of thinking patterns and new competencies. While developing the concept of the user interface, Kay relies on the interpretation of Bruner’s theory of three types of learning. Alan Kay treats new media as meta-media in relation to traditional media because of their ability to simulate existing forms of media and to create the new ones. Ted Nelson has developed the concept of hypertext, which he understands as non-linear text that goes beyond the one-dimensional sequence of sentences. He considers a possibility of a hypertextual system that a) enables the simultaneous communication of all elements and simultaneous alternative displays of a text, b) allows working on documents collaboratively, c) let users track and save changes in documents, storing its versions, etc. According to Nelson’s plan, the implementation of hypertext systems will make computers more alike to the way people think. The article argues that the people who worked on the creation of new media technologies were also the first theoreticians of the new media. Furthermore, the new media combine both technological and humanitarian discourses. Thus, the theoretical background of the new media project allows concluding that they can naturally be considered as a subject of cultural studies. The article emphasizes that while studying the new media, one should avoid alienation from ‘the technical’ because it is technologies that determine their (new media) specificity.