What the Hell is a 'Hypertext'?

For homework we were assigned to read an essay called Stich Bitch by Shelley Jackson (or not her as she seems to imply in the early part of the article?). The first thing that I did after clicking the link in my e-mail was to simply begin reading the text. This came to a screeching halt after a couple of paragraphs. It is written in an annoying, highbrow tone and it just pissed me off that it seemed like I had to look up every other word (e.g. machinic, synaptic, dissolution, assemblage, stasis, and that is just the first subheading). Obviously I wondered what kind of credentials gave this woman the right to write like such an elitist. So I glanced at the URL and observed that it was published on a Massachusetts Institute of Technology webpage, this didn't help to change my perception. Thoroughly peeved, I was determined to dig through the pompous shell of the work and get to what any of it actually meant. I hit a snag with a word that she seemed to base her whole essay of off, 'hypertext'. A quick trip to dictionary.com defined it as "a method of storing data through a computer program that allows a user to create and link fields of information at will and to retrieve the data nonsequentially." This didn't really make sense to me in the context the sentences that she used it in. Aside from the fact that this text happened to be published online, I didn't see what a computer data storage method had to do with anything that Jackson was saying. What did spring to mind however, was the term 'internal text' that Dr. Lay frequently uses in class. Once again, the computer definition didn't really fit into that usage either, so I chose to break the term into its two parts 'hyper' and 'text'. It was easier for me to process as such with 'hyper' being a prefix meaning excessive, and 'text' meaning the original words of an author. I put those two definitions together to form a new meaning for hypertext: excessive original words of an author. At this point the whole wordy style of the author seemed to make a little more sense to me because she admits that "I am Shelley Jackson, author of a hypertext". But she uses the word more times than that (30 times in fact) and in other contexts the term still takes a little more work to understand. The next usage is:

"You're not where you think you are. In hypertext, everything is there at once and equally weighted. It is a body whose brain is dispersed throughout the cells, fraught with potential, fragile with indecision, or rather strong in foregoing decisions, the way a vine will bend but a tree can fall down"

Now I'm not saying that I understand what she is saying in this passage, because I don't. at all. But now she seems to be using hypertext to describe a body, thus bringing again to my mind the phrase 'internal text'. I can only guess that she thinks that every person doesn't have merely an interntal text, they have an internal hypertext. A hypertext that is too extensive and chaotic to be expressed as is, we can't just say exactly what comes to mind all the time, there needs to be a filter. To come full circle, I think that this is where the computer definition comes in. To organize our internal hypertext we need to link relevant pieces of information from our hypertext together so that we can express them nonsequentially. While that sounds as confusing and wordy as the text that I criticized for being confusing and wordy, what I mean is that before an idea can be expressed, an individual must view their whole internal text and only grab parts of it to take with them to the drawing board. Our internal texts are much too chaotic to be expressed as a stream of consciousness.

http://www.box.net/shared/static/p63opp6yl3.mp3