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"