Sunday, July 01, 2007

Cybertext: perspectives on ergodic literature

Although the discussion of the internet is actually pretty short - the discussion on 'Adventure'
is, fairly insightful. He develops a scheme for classifying hypertext - along dimensions of
interactivity, time variability, and several other dimension. He makes the excellent point that non-linear text has existed before 'computer hypertext'. He gives the examples of:
I-Ching, cent mille milliards (Queneau) which allows creating 10^14 sonnets. In fact hypertext
on the machine - can be more controlling than a random access codex (also known as a book).