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In his hypertext essay "Shadow of an Informand: An Experiment in Hypertext Rhetoric," Stuart Moulthrop ends each screen with a series of icons, including one labelled "MORE." While seeming to reinforce conventions of linearity, Moulthrop's MORE actually questions their value. I found that when I tried to read his essay with the MORE button, I more quickly hit dead ends, such as a screen entitled "Perfunctory Closure: Show's over, go home.," which linked only to a place outside of the essay. A fuller reading of the document is possible only by choosing your own links. Readers have had similar experiences with other hypertext essays.
The MORE button also stresses the constructedness of linearity. Moulthrop's document, which was originally composed in STORYSPACE is organized under seven general topic headings. A reader staying within the umbrella of a topic apprehends a certain linearity. By following the MORE button, this linearity is sometimes observed, sometimes disregarded. When I continually pressed MORE starting from a file within the "Shadow of an Informand" topic, for example, I arrived at a file under a different topic "Jumping Off," then landed in a file under "What is this Text," before finally settling in to a series of files from the "Dangerous Questions Topic." By thus stressing the arbitrary nature of linearity, Moulthrop's text can be seen as a proto-type for a new type of non-linear argumenative writing in hypertext.