Social Impacts of Computing: The Framing of Hypertext—Revolutionary for Whom?

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Abstract
Current literature on the social impact of hypertext has focused largely on the similarities between hypertext and the concept of the postmodern Text as defined by Barthes, Bakhtm, Dernda, and Foucault. By claiming that hypertext concretely realizes the shape and role of the postmodern Text, researchers claim also to be able to assess the possible social impact of hypertext. Yet much of the literature also relies on a perspective on the links between technology and society informed almost entirely by a form of technological determinism, based on technicist readings of the development of written discourse. As a result, many of the assessments of the potentially "revolutionary" impact of hypertext on society are overly simplistic. Keywords: hypertext, hypertext/hypermedia, discourse, critical theory, literary theory, literacy studies.