From WordNet (r) 1.6 [wn]:

  hypertext
       n : machine-readable text that is not sequential but is
           organized so that related items of information are
           connected; "Let me introduce the word hypertext to mean a
           body of written or pictorial material interconnected in
           such a complex way that it could not conveniently be
           presented or represented on paper"--Ted Nelson

example: Short Cuts (Robert Altman 1993). Narrative movie. While the viewer can't make choices like he or she can in a hypertext system (I.E., the physical media that is Short Cuts doesn't change from viewing to viewing, where in hypertext it can and does--the story need never be the same twice), the viewer makes meaning emerge from the text.

The film, Short Cuts is a participatory text--it asks the viewer to make connections between characters and themes. Construction of connections is left to the viewer.

From Jay Bolter (1991).Writing space: The computer, hypertext, and the history of writing. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. hypertext "...the interactive interconnection of a set of symbolic elements, iincluding nontext "writable elements" such as "words, images, sounds, or actions that the computer is directed to perform"