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Electronic
writing is not simply the e-equivalent of paper
writing because writing that is electronic has
different properties than writing that is on paper.
Does a message carved into granite differ from one
scratched into sand? One might be inclined to be
slightly more taciturn in the former medium. The
difference is in physical and material properties.
The most interesting of these are not static
properties (i.e., how many lines there are in the
text or how many bytes it occupies) but properties
that relate to the malleability of the electronic
text. These are properties that inject the
unpredictable into the work, always spinning away
from its viewers and creators the way a listserv by
nature spirals off-topic uncontrollably or the way
that, since a page doesn't seem to display the way
you intended, you just live with it. In order to
achieve a better understanding of the dynamics of
web-based hypertext, it is instructive to "read"
such documents as electronic texts displayed and
navigated through the medium of
hypertext.
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