Mick says, "Mark, let me throw a slide at you .. I think it relates to this syllogism we're working through (two thread going on here) ..."
Joel nods at MichaelJ.

A SLIDE:

Eight years ago Mark asked the notorious question "Where are the hypertexts?"  Has the advent of the Web over the last four years helped to answer this question, or made asking it that much more important?

MichaelJ [to Joel]: You've obvious hit on the stratagem that the most of us use to make the web more truly hypertextual, using the map to somehow intervene in the endless branchedness of the link, its constant edge-to-edge linking, to somehow reintroduce surface, recurrence, rhythm...
Mick [to MichaelJ]: so "we htext people" is ... who? Are there htext people on the web? (I would think so) -- you aren't completely demarcating, are you?
Joel nods at MichaelJ.
Sandye is confused... doesn't mapping in Websites constrain the potential of the reader to take charge of her destiny?  How does the intervention of the map make it more hypertextual?  It seems that throwing away all guides would make the possibles and directions endless and solely reader/editor determined.
Joel [to bernstien]: by the way, I didn't mean to say that *you* equated hypertext with the web.  I was referring to a common notion (or misnotion) that when folk talk about hypertext, they mean something published on the web.  I'm with you.
MichaelJ [to Mick]: I meant a shorthand for the pre-web hypertext developers, most of whom mourn the loss of hypertextuality even as they cheer the uniquity of the form. There is a great wariness about the web's trivializing (literally: three ways back forth and out) of the much more supple and spatial nature of hypertextuality
MichaelJ says, "'uniquity" is nice but I meant 'ubiquity'"
Mick says, "I getcha.  I remember you saying the Web was not a good medium for hypertext at MAACW in '96 and the room gasped audibly."
MichaelJ says, "Still say it in one or another talk but with less gasping. I'm especially interested in how audiences increasingly find the web constraining"
Joel hmms.
Sandye wonders if it is possible to expand on those three directions...some way of incorporating depth
Mick says, "So if we are to talk about the "State of the Art" of Hypertext ... I guess much of the very best hypertextual writing being done is not being delivered by the one vehicle the "general public" thinks of as the main outlet for hypertext, the Web."
MichaelJ says, "Both computationally and culturally. Euro audiences especially find it an ideological engine"
MichaelJ [to Mick]: I think it would be going too far to say that. Stuart's web *writing* or Tim McLaughlin's is fine
Sandye asks, "if the best work is being done off the web in cds or in disk form, then doesn't the user still face a constrain of space?"