Hyperland

[4] Much like Apple Inc's Knowledge Navigator concept, Tom acts as a butler within a virtual space populated with hypermedia: linked text, sound, pictures and movies represented by animated icons.

The references to Coleridge and to Kubla Khan are rather knowing nods to Adams' own book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, where they play significant roles in the plot.

Dirk Gently was published in 1987 and also touches on the themes of interconnectedness, suggesting that this was a subject Adams had thought about at some length and for some time.

While Adams is browsing, many people and projects related to the general theme of hypertext and multimedia are presented: The dream (and the documentary) ends with a vision of how information might be accessed in 2005.

In hindsight, Hyperland does describe a number of features of the modern web and, apart from some underestimates of graphics and processing power available, the documentary paints a not inaccurate picture of hypermedia and hypertext and how they are used today.

Tom Baker plays a "software agent," whose appearance can be manipulated by Douglas Adams. Here, Adams has (temporarily) configured Tom to look like a stereotypical Neanderthal .
Adams navigates through the interviews and explanations in the documentary using animated icons . Playback controls shown in the bottom right corner during each interview convey an additional sense of interactivity.