From Links to Dialogue; Hypertext Challenges and Opportunities in Conversational Navigation

Large Language Model (LLM) dialogue is rapidly displacing the blue-link lists that once defined web navigation.While LLM with its fluent answers delights users, this shift affects readers' agency concealing the associative links and orienting cues that the hypertext community has spent eight decades refining.This paper asks: What must be reclaimed, and what new affordances are possible, when navigation is mediated by a conversational model?We revisit seminal systems from Bush's Memex to Intermedia and Storyspace to surface five core principles (associative linking, agency, information scent, non-linearity, maps) and trace how each is strained or obscured in single-pane chat.By framing the problem through humandata interaction, we articulate three design obligations-legibility, agency, and negotiability-and demonstrate how emerging techniques such as evidence cards, trail-map overlays, diversity sliders, and on-device tiny LLMs can move us towards reclaiming user agency in navigating the web.We then outline a research agenda that ranges from authoring grammars for LLM-mediated hypertexts to ethical navigation standards that curb bias and filter bubbles.Near-term tweaks are actionable today; longer-term questions chart a collaborative path for hypertext, HCI, and AI researchers.Combining classic hypertext insights with modern LLM capabilities, we aim to outline a road map for conversational interfaces that preserve critical reading and empower users to see (and steer) the trails behind every answer.