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Coover claims that hypertext has moved from a text based medium to one
dominated more and more by multimedia. In addition to the increased
presence of sound and image on the Web, Coover faults the Web's supposed
lack of concern with non-linearity, or at least with the type of
non-linearity fashioned by the early pioneers of hypertext. These writers
(who Coover believes were mostly fiction writers) worked
exclusively with programs like Intermedia, Hypercard, and Storyspace, software
which did not depend on the Web for functionality (since, of course, the
Web did not yet exist the way it does today).
These pioneer narrative hypertexts explored the
tantalizing new possibility of laying a story out spatially instead of linearly,
inviting the reader to explore it as one might explore one's
memory or wander a many pathed geographical terrain.
Is Coover's dismissal fair? Was hypertext ever "golden?" And if so, has such a
status really ended?
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