Because part of my job is to stand up on deck and just watch the ocean go by. One of the most thought-provoking issues that I've run into during the course of my Kairos work so far is how our authors and others on the Web are measuring up to hypertext theory in terms of their linking styles and strategies . Not well, I am sorry to say. In this blind linking the author chooses a word or two that triggers for him a new node or train of thought. In either case, the reader is forced to make rather uninformed decisions when navigating a hypertext, thus losing much of the meaning-making power attributed to the reader in hypertext theory.
Readers bounce back and forth, hoping the links they follow pay off.
I just clicked. Suddenly I am back to trying to figure out the author rather than creating meaning through my own reading decisions. I'd like to suggest, however, that we try to develop styles that provide as much information as is possible on each link. Perhaps that clarity can come through rewriting a sentence to include a more descriptive phrase to be highlighted, rather than linking from just a word or two. A stylistic alternative to those expanded in-text links would be to cluster links at the end of each node in descriptive phrases.