As a small boy growing up in the Pacific Northwest in the 1930s, Douglas Engelbart loved to play by the creek near his home. He would draw threads from old gunny sacks, re-twist them in multiple strands, then knot together the resulting rope into a swing to carry him back and forth across the running water below.

Thirty years later when he invented the hyperlink, a twist of code swinging data from one point to another, his intention remained much the same. The hyperlink, he says, is all about addressability – “being able to find any given object in another document and just go there."

Now available in the e-book Putting knowledge to work and letting information play: The Center for Digital Discourse and Culture edited by Timothy W. Luke and Jeremy W. Hunsinger.  Blacksburg, VA:Center for Digital Discourse and Culture.