Coined by researcher Theodor Holm Nelson (1938), this term defines writing done in the nonlinear or consequential verbal structures made possible by the computer, for a true computer exposition—whether an essay or a story— offers multiple paths of alternate routes in linking segments. In his radical redefinition, Nelson chracterizes literature as a system of interconnecting documents.
With its network of alternate routes (as opposed to print's fixed unidirectional page-turning),
writes the novelist...