The New River 4

In the last few months--as anyone reading this has no doubt already noticed--several digital reading devices have made their way to market, including the Everybook, from Everybook, Inc.; the RocketBook, from NuvoMedia; and the SoftBook, from Virtual Press. This strikes me as a significant development in the progress of hypertext. These products are not being marketed with hypertext in mind, of course. They envision--accurately, I believe--a world in which the incredibly costly business of printing, warehousing, and distributing the traditional book is replaced by the immensely more efficient downloading of digitized books into reading devices. In such a world, all of Faulkner's books and all of the important books written about Faulkner's books could be contained on a single chip popped into a single reading device, organized and navigated with hyperlinks. In that near-future world, where the context for hypertext writing and art is established; where young people grow up reading on hand-held computers and navigating text with hyperlinks; we can expect to see the evolution of new kinds of writing and art, the beginnings of which we are exploring here first in the New River.