Hypertext is more than links between web pages. It fundamentally shifts how we think.
We no longer read sequentially, following a defined thread of another's construct. We are prone to wander off.
Into space.
Where we make meaning in a new way. Combining thoughts spatially. Thinking differently.
In a synthesis of thought in what has been called the Third Space. One that we suspect activates an important neural network in our brain, the Salience Network. `
This, I believe, is why digital natives think different from those of previous generations. They grew up learning differently, in knowledge unfolded through the web.
They have Digital Minds.
But to unpack the potential of this new realm of Meaning Making, we must not only transform how we read, how we think, but also how we write. For this is where hypertext's real potential lies.
If we reimagine how we write.
Writing that understands that meaning emerges from increasing complex patterns. Patterns that begin with a single words as Containers of Meaning.
Each word with a history. Each word associated with experience. Each word alive with the potential of emergence.
Poets understand this truth. We need to learn from them.
For when we then construct each paragraph, that paragraph is a larger container of meaning. That meaning that must have a clear intention. It must be good. It must delight.
For that paragraph then combines with others on the page, to create another, greater, Holonic meaning. That page then has a title that is our way of recalling the meaning held within as a Poetry of Patterns in larger emerging patterns of meaning.
That is why we write in the wiki. The wiki allows us to make meaning in a new way. One that unleashes the potential of hypertext.