NEW MEDIA: Hypertext 3.0 – Reader Choice?

Been doing some thinking on hypertext and the notion of reader choice of paths and the non-linearity of the medium.

While the idea is that both writer and reader are authors by nature of writing the story in a series of clicks on the hyperlinks and thus changing the sequence and dissolving the idea of linearity, there are two different philosophies at work here–or several.

The writer must write all the stories in a fashion that doesn’t leave the reader at a dead end or jumping off a cliff.  Hence, the writer still has a large measure of control over the reader–not which way he’ll go to get to the end, but where he does eventually end up.  He must take into consideration what needs to be known (in a story atmosphere) as he goes along so that the story itself isn’t missed or nonsensical. 

For the reader, on the one hand he has all this terrific freedom to fly along on the interstate or take the scenic route–and that will depend upon the personality or reading habits of the reader.  But beyond that, does the reader really choose a path–or in fact, is he guessing?  With fiction hypertext, it’s almost a "what’s behind door number 3" deal, with at the most, a word or phrase that may subtly hint at something that arouses the reader’s curiosity.  It may even be the fact alone of it being a link and offering a new direction. In Afternoon, A Story, a hyperfiction by Michael Joyce, for example, the reader really doesn’t have a clue where clicking a word will take him except off that page.  He has produced a different storyline that is unique to him and to this particular reading (the chance of repeating the exact same sequence in a story with 600 plus links without benefit of mapping is slim).  But there is not a choice made as to where he is sending the protagonist; only that it is elsewhere.

And what about those, like me, who are directionally dysfunctional?