Since there are many authors to the many texts that an individual reads on a hypertext network, the issue of authorship will become complicated. For what a reader understands will be affected by the texts of many different authors. Therefore, hypertext to a certain extent kills the author. It removes the autonomy of the text, and removes the notion of authorship. It also decenters the text, and transforms reading into a network.

However, I beg to differ that this form of hypertext only occurs in the electronic world. When I am doing this assignment, I source out Foucault and Barthes' articles, and read Landow's book. I surfed the net for more information, before I finally settle down to do this assignment. Since so many authors influence my work, do they become co-authors in my work? Since I am influenced largely by the knowledge I have after reading these sources, perhaps I am really, not an author. Maybe, as in Barthes' term, I am a writer, someone who performs "an activity". Someone who "posits a goal (to give evidence, to explain, to instruct), of which language is merely a means; for him language supports a praxis, it does not constitute one." (Barthes - Authors and Writers) Or rather, I am just a frustrated student trying frantically to finish up an assignment.