One idea and one man’s name are conspicuously missing from your ruminations about the future of books (“Not Bound by Anything,” March 24, 2007). The former is hypertext—the entire network of texts interwoven by hyperlinks, eventually encompassing everything ever written. And the latter is Theodor or Ted Nelson—the originator and advocate of the idea, which has its roots in the revolutionary Sixties. The hyperlinks can be as unobtrusive as footnotes, citations, or bibliographic references in old books, thus making the reading of everything ever written a simple enough task. Now that books are being digitalized at the rate of many million a year, primarily by Google, the question of how people will read is not as difficult as you seem to believe. The reading medium is within sight, too. The much more difficult question is how to make people pay for what they read. This is the real rub with the idea of hypertext. It is too revolutionary by half, which is perhaps why you have skipped it entirely.

Addendum (March 28, 2007)

Having sent this letter to the mighty newspaper, I googled the World Wide Web for Ted Nelson’s electronic-mail address. I found it in no time, and so I sent it to him, too, together with a few nice words of introduction. “Thanks so much for writing this letter,” he responded in a jiffy. “The clarity of your appreciation is a joy to me,” he concluded. Delighted, I sent him a few more words of appreciation. But the reason for reporting all this is that I am over the moon with the Web. It takes at most a few hours from the first thought to the first contact, and especially with people of real worth. In fact, the greater their worth, the faster and easier the contact.