Self-changing text

Espen Aarseth defines hypertext as a "self-changing text in which scriptons and traversal function are controlled by an immanent cybernetic agent, either mechanical or human…" (...)

The idea of "self-changing text" seems to side step the issue that hypertext can reconfigure the role of the reader, and the author. "Self changing" hints that something else is in control. Perhaps the text itself. In his chapter in Landow's (Hyper/Text/Theory, 1994) book, Aarseth defines hypertext as "merely a direct connection from one position in a text to another".

But this does not indicate that hypertext can also change the reader's position from one text to an entirely different text in an entirely different docuverse-with merely the click of a mouse.

Actually, Aarseth spends much of his book, Cybertext: Perspectives in Ergodic Literature, explaining that we currently have no language to adequately talk about what it is that is happening in hypertext.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/

See that post with different algorithms in metabole

See the journal French Metablog with today different posts