Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization

Landow was among the first to bridge literary theory and computing, arguing that hypertext realised what Derrida, Barthes and Deleuze/Guattari had theorised about the death of the author, the open text and the rhizome. The book traces how giving readers instant access to a web of interconnected sources fundamentally changes the acts of reading and writing — dissolving the boundaries between author and reader, centre and margin, text and commentary. Through three editions (1992, 1997, 2006), Landow updated his argument to account for the World Wide Web, blogs and globalisation, making this the most sustained attempt to connect poststructuralist philosophy with the concrete experience of navigating digital text. For product people, the value lies in understanding that hypertext is not merely a technology but a way of organising thought — and that the design decisions embedded in links, navigation and information architecture carry philosophical weight.