Following the thread of this article, I’m curious to explore some ideas about what we would need to do to change our thinking about writing. What would our thinking have to change to?

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In the Library of Babel, Borges imagines a universe composed of endless hexagonal rooms, each containing books with every possible combination of letters and punctuation. Some contain truth. Most are gibberish. But scattered among them are fragments, half-phrases, and sentences that seem to connect. The librarians spend their lives following these clues through the labyrinth, convinced that somewhere the key to understanding it all lies hidden. The library, then, becomes a metaphor not for knowledge as certainty, but as networked possibility.

Now compare that to the modern web—not the feed-driven one, but the hyperlink-rich, pre-social-media web we once surfed like digital wanderers. That older, wilder web was a Library of Babel with hyperlinks as Ariadne’s thread—lines of connection that didn’t tidy up the labyrinth but made wandering through it meaningful.

So what would it take to write like that again?

Changing How We Think About Writing

To change the way we write, we must first change how we think about what writing is.

We’ve inherited a Gutenberg mindset: writing as the linear delivery of information. One point after another, neatly stacked like bricks to build an argument. This mode works well for books, essays, and academic papers—but it’s poorly suited for the web’s native medium: the link.

Hypertext isn’t just a way to jump between pages. It’s a form of networked cognition. A hyperlink is a neural synapse—an invitation to associative thought. But when we write in the same way we always have—pages, paragraphs, tidy conclusions—we’re using hyperlinks as mere footnotes. They are optional extras, detours from the “real” narrative.

To write with the web, we need to start thinking like gardeners, not architects.

From Linear Pages to Living Webs

What if we stopped thinking about articles as endpoints? What if instead, each post, paragraph, or even sentence was a node—a rhizome, to borrow from Deleuze and Guattari—that sprouts new roots and connections?

“The hyperlink, with its super simple structure — a direction and some characters of description, which could be as straightforward or as subversive as you wanted — did get off the ground, and it is indeed marvelous. The ability to follow links down and around and through an idea, landing hours later on some random Wikipedia page about fungi you cannot recall how you discovered, is one of the great modes of the web. It is, I’ll go so far to propose, one of the great modes of human thinking.” – Mandy Brown

Mandy Brown’s point is crucial: it’s not about the text in isolation—it’s about how the text connects. Hyperlinks, then, aren’t decorative. They’re structural. They’re part of the architecture of thought.

This leads to a shift in intention:

• We no longer write to explain but to invite exploration.

• We no longer aim for completeness but for connectivity.

• We write not for the reader to arrive but for them to depart, launched into the unknown by a provocative link.

What Would That Look Like?

To shift into this new mode of writing, we might:

1. Embrace Fragmentation.

Instead of polished, self-contained essays, we publish modular ideas—hypertext fragments that point outward. Think digital aphorisms linked to longer meditations. A constellation, not a monolith.

2. Design for Surfing, Not Scrolling.

Break the tyranny of the vertical scroll. Think laterally. Curate experiences where the reader can jump sideways, backward, or diagonally. Not infinite feeds, but hyperlinked paths—choose-your-own-intellectual-adventure trails.

3. Build Hypertext Gardens.

Like Andy Matuschak’s notes or Maggie Appleton’s digital garden, these aren’t blogs but living webs. Ideas aren’t archived—they grow, change, interlink.

4. Prioritis Associative Logic Over Narrative Logic.

A traditional essay follows Aristotelian logic: beginning, middle, end. But hypertext thrives on mycelial logic—ideas spreading like fungal networks, where connections matter more than chronology.

5. Make the Reader a Wanderer.

Instead of guiding them to your conclusion, invite them to build their own. Use hyperlinks not to prove, but to pose. “Have you considered this?” is more generative than “Here’s what I think.”

The Real Hurdle: Cognitive Rewiring

Following hyperlinks is work. It requires curiosity, context-switching, an attention span longer than a gnat’s. But perhaps the real challenge isn’t technological—it’s neurological.

The feed offers the illusion of discovery without the labour of seeking. It’s curated passivity. Hypertext demands active navigation. To write (and read) in this mode, we must reclaim an explorer’s mindset.

This might mean:

• Encouraging slower reading. Pausing. Rereading.

• Reframing writing as scaffolding for thought, not just transmission of conclusions.

• Teaching ourselves and others to enjoy disorientation—to revel in the rabbit hole.

In short, we need to rewild our attention.

What’s at Stake?

Writing in hypertext isn’t just about aesthetics or format. It’s a philosophical stance. It’s about resisting closure. Embracing multiplicity. Prioritising curiosity over certainty

And in a world increasingly dominated by algorithmic feeds and optimised dopamine loops, this kind of writing becomes not just artistic—but political. It says:

“I won’t spoon-feed you a narrative. I’ll give you threads. You decide how to weave them.”

That’s powerful.

That’s revolutionary.

Final Thought: Writing as Technomagic

Hypertext writing is a form of technomagic—a spell cast across networks of meaning. Each link is an incantation, a sigil that opens a portal. And the more we write with this mindset, the more we transform the web into what it was always meant to be: not an archive of static pages, but a living, breathing epistemic ecosystem.

So: to change our thinking about writing, we must think less like authors and more like ritualists of connection. Less Gutenberg, more Borges. Less feed, more fungus.

And perhaps most of all, we must remember: the hyperlink is not just a tool—it’s a metaphor for what thinking can be.

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Those who tire of being constantly thwarted looking for meaning among the library’s babble can use reading its jumbled texts as a form of meditation. Eventually your mind learns no longer to search for or expect significance.

You can read Borges’s actual short story here.

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