more than just hypertexts!

Is there a difference between hypertext and interactive fiction?

Montfort point of contention is that in hypertext the reader does not "allows the reader to type and contribute text or provides the computer with the means to parse or understand natural language", and also it "does not maintain an intermediate, programmatic representation of the narrative world, as interactive fiction does."

While it might seem like a signicficant difference, i personally feel the difference is pretty small. While in a hypertext, the reader does not contribute text, he contributes the flow of the story by the links he clicks. Similarly, in an interactive fiction, the links are being provided by text.

Comparing both hypertexts and interactive fiction, their boundaries are already preset by the author, what the reader can explore is already defined and no amount of text/clicking will allows the reader to go in a totally off tangent from what the author originally planned.

Is "Carl" strip a cyber text?
I do not feel that "Carl" comic strip can be considered a cyber text. The story does not exactly change with each new click. The story remains roughly the same with just more details being added each time. Each "different" story could be alluded with the idea of just writing another paragraph for the reader to digest.


Let us review what's Crawford defination of interactivity
It is a process in which actors listen, think and then speak.

let's consider this from the audience point of view.
They are enjoying the play.(Listen)
Then they decide which scence they would like to see next.(Think)
Then they make their choice be known(Speak)

How about the play?
The audience make their preference known to the actors(Listen)
The actors follows the path of the tree to the next scence(Think?)
The play is carried on(Speak)

now notice the (Think?) for the actors
Is just following the tree structre to the next scence a process of thinking?
I personally feel that it cannot be considered so, as there is no real thinking on the spot, rather the reaction of the play has already been long ago decided by the author.

Text that are hyper!

15 years on and the impact hypertext on the world is nothing short of phenomenal. From the orignal use in academic insitutions, internet has branched out to many other ares like sports, games, news, personal websites. The internet is widely touted to be an interactive media, but to me i feel that most of internet usage is a one-way interactive media.

This is because i feel that while the media is somewhat interactive, information is generally transmitted one-way. An interactive medium should be a simultaneous engagement of different users, but the truth is that the Internet has many artificial limits set upon it so much so that it is for the most part a one-way medium. For example, in China, where net censorship is practised, many chinese are not given the full picture on issues.

Also I feel that the internet have increasingly become similar to any other media, in which information is broadcasted to us, rather than being an interactive media. I liken the clicking on each new link, bringing us to new data as being similar to the changing of channles on a cable tv.

However, even so, the internet is a wonderful invention. There is almost definately a topic on anything at all on the net, thus anyone can easily use the internet to search for the things they are researching on. However we will need to be aware that the information might not be accurate. This is because anyone who has access to the internet can write on any topic at all. Thus while making the internet accessible to everyone, we need the users to be responsible for them.

Images and text

1.By allowing the viewer to take an active role in the constructing of the narrative through assembling of modular information elements, the roles of the reader and the author are blurred.

The author does not have full 100% say over what the viewer reads from the narrative, however, the author will try his best to provide the relevant modular elements to allow different readers to construct a similar narrative.

As for the reader, he has to take a more active role in the construction of the narrative as one has to use some imagination and reasoning to fill in the blanks between each element.
In a way the reader is helping the author in writing the narrative.

However, every narrative by every reader will differ slightly as each reader will construct a slightly different narrative, though the main story remains the same, the details are changed slightly.


3.My group have chosen to use many fairy tales as our narrative as it is something that many can relate with. We are approaching this narrative, by considering merging a few fairytales into 1, thus we'll have different characters from different fairytales appearing together.

Also we are considering using some form of audience response to influence the path that the story will go. Right now, we plan to use the noise an audience create to decide how the movie will pan out.