interfacing projecting machines of desire textual surfaces Memesis - Language is a virus The Turing Galaxy Internet:Who doesn't Fight Lives in Fright interfacing imaginary library digitALL - Cyberwar in Vienna
While many hypertext theories simply describe experimental literary works in order, in reaching back to non-linear forms of literature, to develop a story/poetry etc. of hypertext, Stuart Moulthrop applies hypertextual network concepts to the theoretical discourse itself: he writes in small numbered fragments (lexias) that are linked together by numbers after key words and the end of every section. In a misappropriation of Cortázar's method, he suggests numerous reading pathways: linear up to the 46th section "Dutiful End" or branched out reading that orients itself on the cross references ...
After the obligatory instructions, the reader is asked why he isn't already reading the text in a hypertext environment (to be ordered as storyspace for Mac, send a self addressed envelope and diskette to: Stuart Moulthrop, School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0165, USA). Whoever nevertheless continues reading is confronted with the crucial differences between print and electronic publishing by the clever switching back and forth between the actual act of reading (in the printed version), and the repeatedly and vividly presented networked hypertext possibilities. Different opinions on the problems and functions of the links, the function of reading, and the political function of these cultural techniques are compared (and woven together).
In a further development of the (in hypertext circles constantly quoted) definition by Roland Barthes of text as a place of social communication, the productive aspect of hypertextual forms of writing is brought to its head: The printed version always remains an object, however, ad is therefore only an attempt at a flat and unclear approach to the real thing. Mechanical stop. Period. (Log in!)