Before becoming commonplace in our Web vocabulary, the term "hypertext" might have initially brought the word hyperactivity to mind. Interestingly, the term that has replaced hyperactivity in the vernacular—attention deficit disorder—even more clearly illustrates the (mis)connection: While we look to the Web to provide ever more access to and interaction with information, we are increasingly overwhelmed with quantity but not necessarily better informed. Frode Hegland, a researcher at University College London (UCLiC), gives hyper new meaning. The native Norwegian, whose thought processes take tantalizing tangents to exponential extremes, wants to return to the one of the Web's founding principles: interactive information that actually informs. To do this, the student of advertising and human-computer interaction joined forces with Doug Engelbart—arguably, the founder of interactive computing. When Hegland had his first conversation with Engelbart—inventor of the mouse, hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to email and the GUI—Hegland says, "Doug explained what he was doing and I explained what I was doing and I actually felt electricity in my bones because there was such a connection of ideas."
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