| Hypertext 2.0 argues that each information technology has its own particularities and qualities. Whereas printed books are a more fixed medium, electronic text is on the other hand virtual (or less fixed as such in a physical place), open to manipulation, open-ended, processable, easier duplicatable and location-independent. All these qualities seem to correspond nicely to what Vanevar Bush envisioned with his Memex. Hypertext, being a specific mode of publication in an electronic environment, is then typically multi-sequential. |
| Landow connects this explicit (since the links are actually visible and the connected texts are easier accessible) multi-sequential feature of hypertext to Roland Barthes' idea of the 'readerly' versus the 'writerly' text, where the writerly is seen as a more open, ideal text because its readers have multiple entrances to it. This then would break down hierarchies invoked by a text. Hypertext asks for a more active reader who chooses her trails through the cluster of lexias and texts ('docuverse'), making the reader a co-producer of the text. The classical humanist notion of a unique, unitary text gets replaced by a notion of a dispersed text. This creates interesting opportunities for reconceptualising academic scholarship in general, and feminist scholarship in particular, potentially challenging any theoretical hegemonic position. |