Any good text, hypertextual or not, invites an ongoing conversation. Reading doesn't only mean that our eyes decipher the words and that our brains construct them into coherent sentences. Reading is a process by which we ask ourselves whether we agree with what we're reading, whether it convinces us, what the possible consequences of the text are, whether in our own personal experience we know of something to confirm the idea being presented, and more.
Returning to a text and reading it again allows additional layers to become part of that conversation. We find ourselves not only conversing with the text in the previously delineated sense, but also conversing with the conversation that previously transpired. Critics of Bolter and the other hypertext theorists claim that this interaction with the text is a central aspect of any reading process, and that when Bolter emphasizes that the development of this conversation is a basic element of hypertext, he forgets that actually it's part of any active reading process. What's important isn't the technology, they tell us, but rather the qualities of the writing and of the reader: A text that invites interaction, and a reader who is capable of accepting this invitation, will do this without any additional technological aids.
But rereading Bolter has generated for me a reflective process which causes me to question some of the basic points of agreement that I had originally, at first reading, been so impressed with. And perhaps in order to better pinpoint this particular idea, I've also been rereading a number of hypertexts that deal with hypertext, and these two activities, when viewed together, raise an interesting question. Should the process of rereading a traditional text document, and the process of rereading a hypertextual document generate different types, or at least degrees, of reflection?
I would tend to answer "no". Good writing is what generates reflection, not the amount of jumping around that we do within that text. Different, perhaps new, reflections are a result of new experiences which color the way we view the text. On the other hand, perhaps because of the vastness of a good hypertext, and because we're not really expected to read an entire hypertext document from start to finish, we have more of a chance to discover new parts in it when we return to the text at a later date.