The panel continued on the point regarding lack of linear narrative in hypertext based thinking. The traditional form of medium (linear narrative) is referred to as ‘axial’, whereas the more modern version, based around hypertext thinking is called a ‘networked’ structure.

Hyperlinking shows ‘intention’, allowing the writer finer control of how information might be received and assumes that people are not only able to, but always consider several things simultaneously. In this sense, hypertext is said to mimic the way the human brain operates naturally. The phrase, ‘No man is an island’, can also allude to how every reader brings their own biases to interpreting a work, functioning, if you like, as some enormous and unfathomable hypertext document.

It is interesting to ponder how, in the sense of trying to normalise and ‘naturalise’ the way that hypertext is seen as ‘logical’ and/or bio-mimetic, we might merely be imitating machines, rather than ‘inventing’ new ways of looking at the world. Adam Curtis’ documentary, ‘All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace’, is a rambling and mulit-dimensional look, (perhaps mimicking hypertext in its own narrative sensibility) at how, since the ‘death of God’ humans have tried to find meaning by imbuing ourselves with a machine-like consciousness. This modern obsession that ‘networks’ will facilitate a manner of collective consciousness with individual nodes of humankind functioning as a whole greater than the sum of their parts, shows to a degree how all academia mirrors closely the technological cutting edge.