I stumbled onto an article in the Atlantic entitled "What is a Book? 
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In this electronic age, the meaning of books has, obviously, changed. For many, a book is no longer a physical object made from paper - it has also been digitized to be read on an electronic device.
>In the Kindle era, it seems pretty obvious. There is an implicit argument in the act of digitizing a book and removing it from the shelf: a book is its text. A book is a unique string of words, as good as its bits.
_A book is a unique string of words..._
The author illuminates the importance of efforts to go back and study the book as a physical object - suggesting that these objects often contain hints of previous readers as an intriguing part of the story of the book.
A book, that is:
>Not just a bag of words, but a thing held by human hands.
That intention makes sense if one looks backward on the meaning of a book. But if what if one looks forward? What is a book within a new paradigm, a book which, in the context of hypertext, is not a "unique string of words"?
What if, freed from sequential writing and reading, a book becomes a pathway of discovery, for both the writer and the reader? A learning journey shaped by our unique Curiosity. Our individual search for meaning.
A singularity of infinite multitudes.
In this sense, such a book requires another, broader, definition, as a "container of meaning". Something that helps us in our lifelong journey as Meaning Makers.
Hypertext frees us all of the singular sequential and opens the doors to a deeper understanding of the Quantum Thinking.
Ted Nelson, the creator of hypertext, knew this. As did Vannevar Bush before him, who imagined a new learning environment that he called the memex in As We May Think.
But I would argue that, until very recently, we have not really been able to fully experience the liberating freedom of a Hyperbook.
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