Hypertext: the killer of author?

In this lecture, we have talked about the hypertext. Compare it to the traditional text, it is more flexible, with links and give readers their own chooses. (Given’s lecture notes) Books normally have the characterizations of durable; bounded; fixed; and finished. On the other word, they all have an ending of the story. In hypertext story, it is almost impossible to find an ending, because there are always links which can bring more information.

Therefore, people believe that readers would never follow authors’ directions. They can create their own new story by adding links and information. However, some people argue that, hypertext improve the development of reading. Reader can easily found useful information without reading the whole story.

In my opinion, hypertext may kill the original author or author’s original intent, but it creates more and more new authors. Because by using links, every reader can add their new stories and intents to the original story, there would be new stories come out.