Nonfiction works in linked text because it's explicit. Just like a human sentence has

Like Bird, I was struck by a sense of wonder reading Ong. He made me reevaluate writing. I became fascinated by the possibilities of what blogs and the internet will do to language. He traces how symbols and pictures were simplified and turned into written languages. In some cases more than others. In 1716 Chinese had 40.545 characters (86)and "to become significantly learned in the Chinese writing system normally takes some 20 years" (86). Wow! How different this is from English.

So I asked a friend how Chinese computers work. He told me the keyboard keys represent sounds, you type the sound that the word you want begins with and a list of the most common words with that sound pop up onscreen. You choose the word you were looking for. This just seems like such a different experience of interacting with writing and a computer than what we English speakers have. I have trouble even conceptualizing it.