As Michael Heim discusses in chapter three of The
Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, the prefix hyper means "agitated"
or "pathological." To comprehend hypertext, the mind of the reader
must jump from one link to another, in a disorientating "agitated" manner.
Hypertext literacy involves the need to change one's paradigm of what it
means to read. The text is no longer
presented in a logical, linear maner, but as a series of jumps that must
be assembled into a cohesive whole. So hypertext is inherently self
reflexive, even from the basis of its definition.
