Hypertext, according to Joyce, has just such transformative properties. Joyce brings to hypertext, however, a further explanation, one that is important when considering the changing roles of author and reader than many hypertext theorists suggest that hypertext accomplishes. Joyce differentiates between exploratory hypertexts and constructive hypertexts. All text is intertextual in that readers bring to it all their past experiences regarding text, the topic and images, the structure of a given text, and the author. The act of choosing a link and following it allows the reader to think deliberately about the relationships between pieces of text, whether they are individual lexias or writing spaces, or whether they are linked documents.
Hypertext invites multiple voices and multiple authors.
It allows for collaboration between the reader and the writer, and between individual writers. The act of writing hypertext allows the writer, and eventually the reader, to abandon the notion that text has to linear. And I say this knowing that no text can be considered linear. This definition is a bit problematic. But this does not indicate that hypertext can also change the reader's position from one text to an entirely different text in an entirely different docuverse-with merely the click of a mouse.