Evaluating Unstable Media

In discussion, we wondered about ways we might evaluate electronic texts, along with the question of what an "electronic text" is, if it is a text at all.
The attempt to stabilize something like a website or hyper text is an attempt to pin it down so that we can treat it with the tools we've developed for print media, and doing something like printing out web-pages, binding them, stamping them on the cover with "AUTHORIZED EDITION" and putting them on a library shelf might force the information on that web page into the mold of print media, but it doesn't seem like the most thoughtful direction in which to head.
Rather than applying methods of critique to print media, we should invent and discover new methods of critique to apply to electronic media, and allow the application of those methods to improve our understanding of and conversation about both print and electronic texts. For example,. though databases like the MLA bibliography and JSTOR are useful tools for literary research, they by no means utilize the full assets of the connected environment of the Internet. Currently, we take journal articles, photo copy them, convert those images into large PDF files, where people may download them, print them out, and convert them back into something that looks very much like the original journal article. However, if we were to compose serious academic work for electronic media, the Internet could become much more than a temporary storage space and a means of distributing print. Articles themselves can become a site of discussion, and, through links and hypertext, connectivity between scholars and ideas. If we do so, we can make things like footnotes and end notes look as effective and efficient as the old time bike.