Landow on the Metatext

Landow points out that the paradigm underlying hypertext is the network. Hypertext blurs the boundaries between individual documents by linking these documents together into a metadocument, a boundless text that weaves into a web of other documents.

The Web forms a global metadocument composed of tens of thousands of interconnected pages woven into a network with a vast number of navigable paths. Furthermore, this network is fluid. It is ever-evolving with new navigational paths forming and old paths disappearing.

The metadocument might alters the way some view the text while destroying the notion of intellectual separation between documents. A document might not necessaily be a complete, unique statement. Moreover, the Web returns us to a more oral notion that of the ongoing conversation. A conversation that spans the globe.