since the invention of the web, print has had a new competitor. television cannot compete with the individual access that newspapers and books allow. 19S,18R opinions have gone back and forth on this subject as the technology gets increasingly faster and more intricate. some embrace the new medium while others cling to their books and magazines.

could the printed word die out? i think not. it is too important to have a written, or printed, copy of something for records. hypertext is too transient and fragile to become the prominent way of keeping records. in a worst case scenario, millions of files could be lost in a moment. what if it was your bank that had its files crash? history would revert to a type of oral tradition, where details are changed as the story is passed on. it is understandable that this was once an acceptable way to live. but at this point in time, accuracy is a necessity.

hypertext is a good medium to pass information around. the internet is not a good place to gain or teach knowledge. there are no senses involved and this is a downfall of the medium. now if the web could actually transport me somewhere... but this isn't star trek. hypertext also allows the writer to take apart his narrative at the seams.

narrative is supposed to be tightly woven, but as one can see in a novel like afternoon by michael joyce, narrative has already been completely deconstructed. i use the word deconstructed specifically. the narrative was not made into unintelligible pieces, but into separate entities in themselves. each piece becomes a story that mererly has many others connected to it.

i see chapters serving the same function in traditional printed text. though in print, each chapter flows into the next and does not really have meaning without those that preceed and follow it. linearity in text is what does not transcend to the web. space and time become intangible and incoherent. print necessarily has these things and makes printed narrative more realistic and fathomable.

the future of hypertext depends on the fluctuations of authors and the technology. the most important thing is to begin to base hypertext, novels and web pages, in real time, where people can grasp things as real. the medium also needs to be a tool in understanding, not the end all source.