Hypertext is not the internet, but rather the internet is a hypertextual framework. Though this is an obvious fact, today's almost total identification of hypertext with the World Wide Web blurs the differences between the two. We also tend to forget that a number hypertextual tools existed before the web and continue to exist alongside it. But it's important to this review that Bolter's discussion of hypertext predates the World Wide Web, and that his examples are surprisingly primitive in comparison to what is now both available and prevalent. Hypertext is, among other things (and from Bolter this should be clear), a way of thinking, and this basic element doesn't change because almost all hypertext is now in the framework of the web.

The success of the web, however, allows us to examine two important aspects of hypertext. First, hypertext was, until the web, a tool, perhaps a toy, of academics and people for whom writing was part of their profession. As such, perhaps the claims made about hypertext related more to those working in the medium, than to the medium itself. Second, hypertext before the web was (the databases that Bolter refers to not withstanding) a highly private medium. Most hypertextual writing was a thought exercise by one author within a framework that he created. The web, however, as the ultimate public medium, added depth and breadth to hypertext. Suddenly the realm of interaction was transferred from the mind of the author to a stage where all could observe, and participate. This was not a totally unpredicted change, but it's proportions were, it seems, totally underestimated. Thus it is legitimate to ask whether the popular success and use of hypertext, and the interconnectibility of almost everything that has become the promise of the web, have changed the way writers make use of it.

Go to: The granddaddy of them all?, or
Go to: Prove you're not making all this up