To that model, hypertext adds the topical link-node diagram which is offered as an intelligible data structure. Current media add the situated speech of conversation, image, sequence, motion and structures of interaction. The Art of Memory, a mnemonic tradition that began in ancient Greece and persisted through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and into the seventeenth century gives us an account of how people could hold and organize thoughts, making of themselves walking books without using the written word. It may also point toward ways for developing visual and narrative models of intelligibility to apply to new media. The notion of hypertext needs to include interactive media in general including multimedia.
Intelligibility is the most fundamental problem of all multimedia.
The computer age notion of information is a cultural construct that presents both a means and a barrier to understanding hypermedia. The application of postmodern literary theory to hypertext has often involved critical confusions and is misapplied when one steps out of hypertext based literature. The Art of Memory provides us with way to open up questions of intelligibility through structure, visible form, metaphor, and narrative. Hypertext is as much a term for understanding as it is an objective phenomenon. It is perhaps the best ready-made method for considering the problems of interactive media.