Text, myth and hypertext

One of my two current projects is what we here in the word factory call "LAU" (rhymes with "how"), "Latin American Architecture and Urbanism." It is intended to be, alas, no more than an ordinary, old-fashioned book, the kind where the pictures don't move and to follow the links you have to turn pages or go off to the library. Here is an example of another way of doing it, a hypertext titled "BURIED MIRROR. THE EAGLE AND THE CACTUS. TRANSCRIPT". You can get lost in these pages.

Perhaps -- no, almost certainly -- when our book appears, it will be accompanied by a web site that exploits such electronic digressions. A map like this one of Tenochtitl�n is truly useful. Maybe that will be the best of two technologies. I still think there is merit in the old one, the printed book, that constrains a reader to follow the author's logic -- instead of letting said reader jump around from reference to reference, willy nilly. The print book tells a story; the other facilitates an experience.