One of the first things I noticed about hypertext when I started reading it was how difficult it is to find hypertexts written since 1997, and even the majority of the literature I found written before then was all catalogued through the same site, Hyperizons (which hasn't been updated since 1997). I realized, looking at much of the work that has been criticized, that most of the hypertexts I was reading were all very similar, and most of the criticism just restated the same theories that were implicit (and sometimes explicit) in the literature itself. It was impossible to avoid Eastgate's label on everything substantial I read, meaning that everything I read was a Storyspace program. Every text had the same commands for interacting with the text, which always meant the same navigation, the same system of linking, and, what really frustrated me, the same general idea about how hypertext is read. It was fitting that, in a genre that always exploits reader déjà vu, I kept asking myself, "haven't I read this before?"

Out of the pool of literature and criticism I read, a few works surfaced as examples of the kinds of orthodoxies installed in the Eastgate canon. These canonical works were landmarks for hypertext (and for literature overall, in my humble opinion), but unfortunately many writers didn't know what could come next. Even some of the most useful (and recent!) critical texts still answered the what-comes-next question the same way the history of hypertext is written, by admiring and analyzing the work of the early canon. The only way for hypertext to evolve is to look outside the canon.