With hypertext, there is no one definitive, final reading. There is no "fixed" text.
When I assign a print text to a class, I can assume that everyone has read the same text. When I assign a hypertext, I can make no such assumption. I have no way of knowing which particular sections any one reader has read.
Active reading is an absolute requirement for a hypertext. The text doesn't exist on screen until it is called up to be read. Only during the act of reading are the paths chosen. Prior to reading, the hypertext exists as a multitude of possibilities, of potential readings.
With hypertexts the literal text is altered by the act of reading it.
Because of its unfixed nature, hypertext is a temporal form — although stories and poems (and especially plays) unfold over time, a hypertext is created by the temporal experience of reading it.
The unfixed form of the hypertext consists of multiple reading paths (links) between sections of text (screens).
How is meaning created in such a structure?