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hypertext theorists
Hypertext theory appears to be represented by three separate undertakings.
There are hypertext programmers, the people who design hypertext software and attempt to implement various visions of what hypertext is. These are the people who invented (and continue to invent) systems like the Web, and make our web browsers more and more sophisticated. They are also the people who write the programs we use to write our web pages, or our Storyspace hypertexts.
The second group are what might be described as hypertext information managers (I would include a lot of HTML users in this category). These are people who use hypertext systems to catalogue, publish, distribute or otherwise organise information. This is one of the reasons why libraries have become a key site of Internet access and use simply because libraries have redefined themselves as information warehouses rather than book warehouses.
The third major group is represented by the hypertext theorist, someone who might not know anything about programming but who is able to bring a critical theory tradition to think about what sort of thing hypertext is, or might be.
In the beginnings of hypertext theory and practice there were (and are) people who are conversant across all three domains. For example Jay David Bolter, Mark Bernstein, or Michael Joyce. However with the increasing popularity and use of hypertext systems (including the web) it is more common to find people who are conversant with two of these domains.
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