Organization of the text

In cybernetics the term cybertext is used to describe the concept of organization of the text in order to analyze the influence of the medium as an integral part of the literary dynamic, as noted by Espen Aarseth in 1997.

The term cybertext is derived from the word cybernetics, which was coined by Norbert Wiener in his book Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948), which in turn comes from the Greek word kybernetes -helmsman.

The fundamental idea in the development of the theory of cybernetics is the concept of feedback: a portion of information produced by the system that is taken, total or partially, as input. Cybernetics is the science that studies control and regulation in systems in which there exists flow and feedback of information. Though first used by science fiction poet Bruce Boston (Cybertexts, 1992), the term cybertext was brought to the literary world’s attention by Espen Aarseth in 1997.

Aarseth's concept of cybertext focuses on the organization of the text in order to analyze the influence of the medium as an integral part of the literary dynamic. According to Aarseth, cybertext is not a genre in itself; in order to classify traditions, literary genres and aesthetic value, we should inspect texts at a much more local level.

The concept of cybertext offers a way to expand the reach of literary studies to include phenomena that are perceived today as foreign or marginal (Aarseth, 1997). In Aarseth’s work, cybertext denotes the general set of text machines which, operated by readers, yield different texts for reading.

For example, with a book like Raymond Queneau’s Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, each reader will encounter not just poems arranged in a different order, but different poems depending on the precise way in which they turn the sections of page.

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Ergodic Literature

The shortcomings of importing theoretical assumptions developed in the context of print into analyses of electronic media were vividly brought to light by Espen J. Aarseth's important book Cybertext: Explorations of Ergodic Literature.

Rather than circumscribe electronic literature within print assumptions, Aarseth swept the board clean by positing a new category of "ergodic literature," texts in which "nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text". Making a different analytical cut through textual groupings that included computer games, print literature and electronic hypertexts, among others, Aarseth established a grid comprised of eight different operators, many of which have purchase mostly with electronic texts rather than print. The grid yields a total of 576 different positions on which a variety of different kinds of texts can be located. Although the method has limitations, notably that it is blind to content and relatively indifferent to the specificity of media, it has the tremendous virtue of demonstrating that electronic texts cannot simply be shoved into the same tent with print without taking into account their different modes of operation. These innovations have justifiably made Cybertext a foundational work for the study of computer games and a seminal text for thinking about electronic literature. Markku Eskelinen's work, particularly "Six Problems in Search of a Solution: The challenge of cybertext theory and ludology to literary theory," further challenges traditional narratology as an adequate model for understanding ergodic textuality, making clear the need to develop frameworks that can adequately take into account the expanded opportunities for textual innovations in digital media.

Proposing variations on Gérard Genette's narratological categories, Eskelinen demonstrates, through a wide variety of ingenious suggestions for narrative possibilities that differ in temporal availability, intertextuality, linking structures, etc., how Aarseth's ergodic typology can be used to expand narratology so it would be more useful for ergodic works in general, including digital works.

By N. Katherine Hayles

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