In contrasting a kind of place with a kind of hypertext, we need to remember that our embodiment, our being-in-place, is far stronger and denser than our being-in-texts, even though places can be seen as a kind of text-ure. Being in position and being oriented in place can be oppressive or liberating in ways that texts cannot manage. (The two may tend to come together as texts become multimedia and then mutate toward virtual realities.) Because embodiment is unavoidable (even virtual places are such because they offer some analogue to embodiment), design in the traditional sense remains very important amid all the talk about linkage and virtualities.
(c) David Kolb, 1 August 2001