Twin Media: Hypertext Structure Under Pressure

On August 13th finished the 15th Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia held in the University of California, Santa Cruz. Several awards were presented during the conference: the Douglas Engelbart Best Paper Award went to David Kolb for his Twin Media : Hypertext Structure Under Pressure.

This essay explores issues that arise in composing a long argumentative hypertext that is connected with a book on the same subject.
It concerns not the old navigation problem for the lost reader, but the construction problem for the uncertain author who worries about readers.
It reports on a practical experiment, and deals with issues in hypertext rhetoric and link structure that arise in the construction of a hypertext under pressure from a book version.
Although the situation of the hypertext being discussed is somewhat unique, in fact hypertext structure is always under pressure from print habits of reading and writing, especially in scholarly writing, so the issues discussed here are widely relevant.