Why use Hypertext?

While reading Landow’s “Hypertext and Critical Theory” it brought me back to what I learned in my What is a Text class. We discussed much about Hypertext Specifically in consideration with HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language). Hypertext defined in our reading from “Hypertext and Critical Theory” states that Hypertext, a fundamental intertextual system has the capacity to emphasize intertextuality in a way that page limited books cannot. Kimberly Amaral another theorist who talks about hypertext explains that hypertext is “simply a non-linear way of presenting information” or a “Non-sequential writing.”

Why use Hypertext? Hypertext is said to be associative it works like how our brains should work opposed to a linear path. Since hypertext works in a way that our brains work, processing many different things at once that hypertext can be considered accoriding to Amaral a “thought machine”. In landow’s article it explains “All hypertext systems permit the individual reader to choose his or her own center of investigation and experience. What this principle means in practice is that the reader is not locked into any kind of particular organization or hierarchy” (landow Pg 38). With the use of hypertext the reader has no constraints. So overall hypertext is a multi-media medium. Which involves the users to be interactive. By using hypertext you are more then a writer, more of a reader and a user.