HYPERTEXT YES, LITERATURE NO
Yale computer scientist and author David Gelerntner says that “in a
hypertext system, the computer allows you to assemble fragments of text and read them off the screen in any sequence that appeals to you, without guidance from the author, as if you were a bird gaily weaving your nest out of random bits of trash. But if you sacrifice literary architecture, the logical unfolding of an argument or a plot, you sacrifice literature.”
Gelerntner says that “hypertext literature isn’t merely bad, it’s silly. Rotten education is a grave evil; hypertext-as-literature is a bit of nonsense that will blow away as soon as the next good fad kicks up.”
(National Review 6/12/95 s.65)