Joyce comes to hypertext as both a writer and as a software designer. He, along with Jay Bolter and John Smith developed Storyspace, a hypertext writing program that allows writers to map out their documents, and allows readers to keep track of their reading throughout a given docuverse. In this way the writers hoped to assist both readers and writers with the sometimes disorienting task of reading their ways through a hypertext web. What is important here is that Joyce identifies hypertext as a visual form. It is easy to lapse into topographical rhetoric when talking about hypertext.
Writers create map views.
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.