A new artform. The idea of hypertext fiction is older than the computer, but computer-based implementations of the idea are as new as the personal computer, and have many roots. ... It takes more than a new concept to create a new art form so, if we are to understand the development of this new form of literary art, we must explore the development of skills, peer groups, support institutions, and audiences. Howard S. Becker. “Hypertext Fiction,” pp. 67–81 in M. Lourdes Lima dos Santos, Cultura & Economia, Lisbon: Edicões do Instituto de Ciências Sociais, 1995. article 
This page is a Forage.
Print-based hypertexts depend on the already existing world of print literature, on its institutions, conventions, and audiences. Computer-based hypertexts, on the other hand, have created a new world of cooperative links: new writing tools, new forms, new marketing arrangements, and new readers. “New” and “old” can [and?] should be seen, then, as social constructs to be understood sociologically, rather than as literary facts.
One implication of this analysis is that, if we remember that one of the cooperating parties in the production of any work of art is the audience, we can think of a work as coming into existence anew every time someone looks at it, reads it, or hears it. This reminds us, and gives us a way to think about, the fact that the physical object is in a real sense not the whole art work, which is always being reinterpreted. The interpreter helps to create the work’s character as a result.