Michael Joyce's hyperfiction Afternoon is a critically acclaimed piece of hypertext. Dinner theatre is a type of play where actors act out, for example, a murder scene. Like hypertext, dinner theatre requires audience interaction, where the audience can influence who the murderer will be and the ending. Dinner theatre will never be compared to a Shakespearean play. It seems that hypertext will have a similar fate.
Online access requires a machine that is extremely expensive.
Even though an increase in technological development has allowed the cost of computers to be a fraction of what they were ten years ago, the cost is still out of reach for those who live below the poverty line. While it may be true that children who live below the poverty may have limited access to computers, it is likely those computers are of low quality because the children are likely to be attending poor schools with limited public funding. Hypertext can be frustrating already for a new user, but it can especially frustrating when the machine is slower than usual. The reality is that hypertext may never reach the Third World. Supporters of hypertext claim that these people would also have trouble accessing classic literature.