Hypertext presents people with a potential to design our communication and learning - our reading - in far reaching ways. Through hypertext, we can begin to relate ideas and information about those ideas and to bind together for further consideration threads of information and concepts. The possibilities of expanding our comprehensive understanding and theorizing about topics of concern are now extended in new ways and with a new level of accessibility that we can pursue along volitional paths as we read and choose our avenues of inquiry and association. The effects of this technology can arguably enhance our problem solving ability and greatly aid our research. Let us begin moving toward consciously constructed hypertext documents and let us develop the tradition of providing syndetically grouped hyperlink pathfinders to quality offsite material as aid and option for our peers. Let us use the word pathfinder to identify such indexes gathered and arranged according to sound principles of information access, documentation, and clear statement of responsibility.

To write hypertext, we must begin to think in terms of hypertext. The excellence of making traditionally conceived documents available through well ordered and classified hypertext pathfinders is not only an irreplaceable foothold, but a taxonomic parent of vision and purpose. We do not discard the steps we have already climbed in coming to a landing and door. Besides, it is not my purpose to do away with books or linear digital documents. Much laudatory work is being done through our library system to digitize collections for the record. While these documents will never be truly intentional hypertext, they remain the only document of that which they truly are. When I want peanut butter, I open a jar labeled "peanut butter" fully hoping to find peanut butter inside. Let us have reverence for our ancestors' anticipation - and grateful humility. We need not reinvent the wheel.

On the other hand, this essay is an exercise in deliberate hypertext; I seek to generate hyperlinks infralinking this hypertextually conceived document wherein each link exemplifies the syndetic particulars of one or more principles articulated in the document itself. Success, for this document, will demonstrate topical self-reference according to principles established in both the conception and, intrinsically, through the development of the document itself. This essay should describe itself by applying the theory underlying the purpose of the document to the infrastructure of the document itself.

Redundant paths are an intrinsic architectural feature of the Internet. When we consider the many possible routes that electronic signals can travel from one point to another - including all telecommunications lines and wireless transmission capabilities - we enjoy a wealth, which enables a multitude of options for the very connections that enable our sharing of information with access speed and breadth of selection unknown just decades ago. As we contrive to write hypertext, we can reflect the artifice of redundant paths in creating documents through which we can weave our way and reference via many combinations of choices we make in the selection of a continuing path from hyperlink to hyperlink, page to page. Key here is the work of those who establish hyperlink choices, who establish destinations for each point-and-click moment of volition. From the simplest targeting of footnotes and like documentation, to further explanations and expansions of topic implication, the hypertext architect is invited to design a seamless cohesion of cognate explication. Indeed, such explication becomes a responsibility.