Hypertext Must At Least Be Flexible

[Alice Wei]

When Landow states that hypertext is like a plateau, I do not quite agree. Does this mean that those words on the screen can only be read by themselves without connection to one another? It seems that what it is suggesting is like five or six different essays, journals or poems on-line, which all are unrelevant to each other. Instead, I believe that hypertext must at least be like 柳宗元's 永州八記, which can be read as separate ones as well as with continuity. In case they are all just like plateaus, without relevancy to each other like different sets of journals, then it is no more than using the computer as a sheet of paper, and not a 平台 of thinking.
However, in case the hypertext are all like the work I have mentioned before, then that is not going to work either, but at least they have to be [b]FLEXIBLE[/b], and fit the readers needs. In case I want to read one chapter on-line, but I do not want to let the character face one of the consequences as the author suggested, at least I can do something about the story as it is processed, according to my choice in the way I am reading about. Hypertext is not just a bunch of words on-line without any relevancy, then I guess that it is no more than placing one chapter of 紅樓夢 and one chapter of 水滸傳 and 西遊記 together as a book. They have to offer the readers chocies, and not just simply offering lots and lots of plateaus on the Internet for readers to wander around without a sense of direction.