Mick asks, "Let's start with an old question, but one that I keep hearing from an ever-expanding audience ... what's hypertext?  The Web is hypertext, right?"
MichaelJ says, "As Stuart Moulthrop says HTML means "hypertext more or less.""
Mick laffs.
Joel laughs.
bernstein says, "Hypertext is interlinked writing, usually read on a computer. The Web is a hypertext. So are lots of other things."
Joel nods at bernstein.
Mick says, "OK, but if you're talking to a group of FYComp teachers at CCCC ... the Moulthrop crack doesn't really mean much to them."
MichaelJ says, "When I had to define it for such an audience I began by saying that it is before all else a visual form."
Mick [to bernstein]: the Web is a hypertext?  Or a place where many hypertexts can be? Can you conflate webtext and hypertext in some way?
Joel says, "seems like the Web is a tool with that, in some ways, is naturally suited to present hypertext ... or perhaps *overtly* and visually present hypertext ... but to *equate* the two seems limiting."
MichaelJ says, "My standard definition is reading and writing (viewing and editing) in an order you choose where your choices change the nature of what you read or view ... in that sense the web is *not at all* "naturally suited to present hypertext""
Sandye [to MichaelJ]: could you elaborate there?  why not?
bernstein says, "I did not equate the Web and hypertext. I said that the Web *is* a hypertext. When I said, "The Web is a hypertext", I didn't equate the Web and hypertext. Socrates is not equal to man."
MichaelJ [to Sandye]: There is very little provision for intervention in the flow (sans Java engines and the like riding above the web).
Mick [to bernstein]: OK ... so the Web is to Socrates as hypertext is to humanity?  The Web is a hypertext platform?  Am I following you?
MichaelJ says, "Nor is there the possibility (or an easy one) for shaping the experience of a reader/viewer, guiding ..."
Joel [to MichaelJ]: how so?  Is the orderly-appearance of the web misleading?  That is, when a webtext offers a "map" or table of content to a multi-node document, does that subtract the potential for cosing the directions and orders in which text is read and dealt with?
MichaelJ says, "It always interests me that the commercial web types make the distinction more than we htext people do. They will describe a site as having hyperlinks, as if all sites don't."