What Kind of Hypertext?

So where are the hypertexts? It seems that we first need to ask another question: what sort of hypertexts are we looking for? Certainly the existing hypertexts-on-hypertext satisfy at least part of the definition of hypertextual writing ( Berk and Devlin 1991; Nelson 1990). They can be read in multiple sequences and they allow readers to articulate transitions through a scheme of specified links. In what sense then are these documents not the right kind of hypertext?

It's because these texts were printed documents before they were hypertexts, and because they retain traces of singular and hierarchical composition. To be sure, these writings represent hypertext of a kind -- hypertext as repurposed print. This is the kind of hypertext Nelson has in mind in his early descriptions of a "docuverse"of interlinked linear discourses. It is also the conception Bolter uses when he describes the ultimate hypertext as a vast linked encyclopedia or "great book".

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