Multimedia
There are plenty affinities between hypertext and post-structuralism. Hypertext’s theories tend to rely on the works of post-structuralist like Foucault, Barthes, Deleuze, and Derrida. By the same token, post-structuralism finds in hypertext a fertile terrain for its approaches to language and communication. Usually post-structuralism is characterized by its critical stances on issues related to writing, language and communication. Post-structuralist have theorized about linkages, the death of the author, the end of the book and against lineal ways of thinking and writing. For example: “Derrida continually uses the terms link (liasons), web (toile), network (réseau), and interwoven (s’y tissent), which cry out for hypertextuality” (Hypertext, http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/ht/derrida1.html). Another example is the Foucauldian arguments about the death of the author, or Barths' idea of the writerly text. Deleuze’s assemblage, de-territorialization, and irrational cuts also seem to be related to hypertext and hypermedia.
On the other hand, people like Ted Nelson and Andries van Dam -which are not engaged on the academia, but are innovators on the computer industry- speak and work in terms of non-linearity, network of nodes, links and webs. The similarity between the two groups is evident. This shows that between hypertext and post-structuralism exist a symbiotic relationship. George Landow describe that relationship in the following terms: “critical theory promises to theorize hypertext and hypertext promises to embody thereby test aspects of theory [...] hypertextuality embodies poststructuralist conceptions of the open text” (Hypertext, http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/ht/parallels.html).
Other important characteristics of Hypertext are:
The Author, the Reader and the Book