- "Like any cultural shift, hypertext has been accompanied by the controversy and contention, much of it having to do with disputes about the nature of mind and especially who holds the power over symbolic structures. Some see hypertext as another way of reading; some see it as a new way of knowing--yet what is read and who should know what are both in dispute" (25).
Joyce maps important currents of thought including John McDaid's vision of an empowered culture, Jane Yellowlees Douglas' desire to "reject the either/or" and move toward the "and/and/and," and his own argument for constructive hypertexts offering "a structure for what does not yet exist" (26).
He then offers a view of critical theorists like Stuart Mouthrop, who cautions that hypertext could be used by the establishment to deny a dissatisfied society real access and power, Cythia Selfe and Gail Hawisher, who ask us to examine whose interests and visions hypertextual realities really serve, and Carolyn Guyer and Martha Petry, who call for a deconstructive move where the "connection itself [becomes] a figure agianst the grounds of writing" (26).
Finally, Joyce ends this essay by pointing out some hard questions like what hypertext means to the future of the old copyright system and how hypertext challenges our ideas about "textual closure, authorship, and reader response." The most important question from this essay for me was whether any of this technology can "bridge the widening gulf between developed and less developed countries and economic social classes" (29). As far as I can tell this has not been the case. The gulfs continue to widen, especially in education.
