Could it be that text itself is a worn-out tool of a dying human era . . .?

Or could it be that "text" continues to do what it has always done, become the medium which plays out its message. Whether the medium is radio, film, television, or hypertext, text in the electronic age means more than words. "It will be obvious by now that I am still in love with the word," Coover writes. To write electronically, though, does not mean that we abandon the word. The word continues to function in new media, forging new modes of expression in image and sound. As Marshall McLuhan taught, new mediums do not destroy old mediums; they always carry over the old into the new.

This is where we become self-reflexive. For while "words" make up this text you are reading, it is still a hypertext, albeit a simple one. In addition to words, the hypertext you are reading incorporates javascript, cascading style sheets, tables - innovations in writing created by hypertext. Taken to other levels, such innovations create more intense multimedia experiences. In the twenty first century, multimedia is writing; there are no "surface enhancements" as Coover bemoans. There is only writing.