When I wrote this text as a keynote address at a conference on literacy and its futures, I imagined "we" would mean academics, especially humanists. But here, in this context, I also mean anyone who has the capital -- both the financial kind and cultural kind -- to be considering this issue with me in this forum.
The World Wide Web's instantiation of hypertext comes closer to preserving the privileges and power relations of print than most of the other systems -- I'm thinking of commercially available software like HyperCard or Storyspace or Guide -- devised to facilitate the development of multiply branching, electronic texts.
On the other hand, it offers many, many people a venue for publishing and exchanging ideas for a relatively small outlay of capital. Nothing's perfect.
This page is part of the article, "E-literacies: Politexts, Hypertexts and Other Cultural Formations in the Late Age of Print."