2. How Hypertext Ate Itself

Today, despite the fact that hypertext provides the conceptual underpinnings for the World Wide Web (among other things), "hypertext" remains a relatively peripheral term.

During the mid to late 1990s, hypertext seemed too good to be true: the simple node/link technology provided a powerful way for understanding and enacting textual structures that had long been hinted at.

For literary theorists, hypertext provided the true weapon for assasinating the author: readers now wrested control of the text away, kicked the author in the head a few times for good measure, and skipped off into the dawn of a new day.

For poets and creative writers, hypertext provided the foundation for erecting a space for free exploration and innovation, unburdened by the repressive limits of the line.

For technical writers, hypertext provided a method for dealing with individual users in varying, concrete situations. Henceforth, rather than force users to tediously thumb through manuals, hypertextual online help would bring the right information (and *only* the right information) directly to the user, when the user needed, not a moment sooner or later.

I can almost hear the children laughing and singing now.

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johndan johnson-eilola | http://www.clarkson.edu/~johndan/  | johndan@clarkson.edu