SOURCE: "Reading Hypertext: Order and Coherence in a New Medium," in Hypermedia and Literary Studies, edited by Paul Delany and George P. Landow, The MIT Press, 1991, pp. 153-69.

[An American educator and critic, Slatin has written several essays on hypertext. In the following essay, he remarks on the continuities and differences between hypertext and conventional text.]

The basic point I have to make is almost embarrassingly simple: hypertext is very different from more traditional forms of text. The differences are a function of technology, and are so various, at once so minute and so vast, as to make hypertext a new medium for thought and expression—the first verbal medium, after programming languages, to emerge from the computer revolution. (The computer has spawned new media in the visual arts and music as well.) As a new medium, hypertext is also very different from both word processing and desktop...