Triangulation of Will’s Interpretation of Hypertexts, Kirschenbaum’s Hypertext and Cyberspace

Kirshenbaum defines hypertext as "electronic text organized as a nonsequential system of links and destinations" and Will supplements it by quoting Nelson as saying "nonsequential writing--text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen. As popularly conceived, this is a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways." Will also defines it via Landow as "text composed of blocks of words (or images) linked electronically by multiple paths, chains, or trails in an open ended, perpetually unfinished textuality described by the terms link, node, network, web, and path". The "lucid mapping" webpage that was shown is the most visual definition of hypertext and the display as a whole imitates cyberspace.

Surfing cyberspace, and in turn utilizing hypertext, is much like a "choose your own adventure novel" on steroids. As both Kirshenbaum and Will reflect, no two people will read the page the same way. Exploring a webpage through hypertext is like taking one aspect of a document and following it as far as the link sequence extends. When that particular thought is exhausted and/or the reader wishes to return to the original thought, all he/she needs to do is press the navigation buttons to go back and forth. Cyberspace utilizes this hypertext and imitates its structure in that one website can lead to another and can be traveled with ease.

The mind works like this. Will and Kirshenbaum corroborate this thought. Most thought processes are just like hypertext and cyberspace in that one's thought process could start regarding one topic and end up on a totally different topic. The technology has finally caught up with the inherent way of thinking. Will asks the readers to use hypertext, the vehicle to cyberspace's "highways". Will sees the academic merit in hypertext, claiming that it is a technology that, when used correctly and not for commercial reasons, hypertext has brought to the forefront "the fact that there are many paths through a computer text is one of the most explosive changes in reading". Will also says that "How a screen appears, and in what order screens appear, no longer produces the turning of pages. Hypertext adds new dimensions to the reading transaction". Kirshenbaum mentions this, but makes it a point to explain that one cannot match the book in many ways. However, they both imply that cyberspace, and hypertext in particular, present new ways of thinking and new ways of viewing a topic.