Hypertext- Making the world a smaller place

Landow’s hypertext and critical theory passage was attention grabbing due to the fact that I had never thought of hypertext in that fashion. To me whenever I had heard the word hypertext I had always thought a clickable link on a webpage that would take the user to another point in the web, nothing more nothing less. Landow explores that hypertext has the implications of giving readers direct, simple contact to a digital library of sources as well as unparalleled jurisdiction of what and how they read. So it could be said then that hypertext is a non-linear way to present information, couldn’t it? Hypertext is what makes up the foundations of the digital world, being able to clink a link and being transported to another direct source of knowledge and information. Thinking of it as a vast digital cyber-spider web helped, and one is able to visualize the capability of Internet linking.  

The digital world is changing so fast and is growing so big that its heading in the direction to say that soon, books will become a system of "closed" authorial publications and unlock the door for the "open" systems, such as the hypertext and hypermedia. A large portion of people already get a majority of their news from online publications, soon newspapers will become an absolute model of the past. It can be said for novels and textbooks, the populace will read and gather data from hyperlinks and hypertexts on their tablets and smart phones. Hypertext is always changing and evolving as the people, “users”, continue to expand and develop the Internet. Socially, culturally, and systematically, the Internet changes into something else everyday and it’s almost daunting to see in your mind's eye its immensity.