The extract from George Landow’s “Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization” pinpoints some important ideas about how stories and narratives are structured within new media forms.

He argues that “hypertext challenges narrative and all literary form based on linearity, [and] calls into question ideas of plot and story current since Aristotle.” For the most part, I feel that we think of this in terms of electronic forms of print, or making what was traditionally print media an interactive and interwoven experience. In this, we experience different kinds of media from different sources.

But I also think that this can be used to explain the ways in which we consume other media, particularly television.

It can be seen more and more that people want an interactive experience from television viewing. Michael Wesch explains how TV was traditionally a one-way medium, whereby people would congregate around a TV and watch a program at a time and in a way that is dictated by the televisions networks.

However, now people are viewing TV according to their own schedules, on any number of devices, on demand, out of order and so on. As such, it’s interesting to see media creators writing for these trends and technologies that support it.

Case in point: Arrested Development season 4. This show was originally broadcast like any other show, with up to 24 episodes in a season. It was critically acclaimed and had a cult following but was cancelled after 3 seasons. But in May 2013 it made its return on Netflix, the online subscriber viewing platform. Not only was it unique in being produced exclusively for Netflix, but its format was completely re-orchestrated to include 15 new episodes that could be watched in any particular order.

In this, the author “grants readers more power” to read the narrative in the order they wish. Whilst ultimately the narrative as a whole will be the same, the experience changes according to the order in which you view the episodes.

Although this alone may not explicitly relate to hypertext, it does lend to some of the ideas about why authors use hypertext, and particulary why it is so relevant to reading and viewing trends of today.

Furthermore, Landow’s point that authors use hypertext to create combinatorial fiction is relevant to almost any television program with a widespread following.

Although we no longer gather around a TV set to experience a show together as one imagined community, many people share in discussions online through social media and web forums. It is in these virtual spaces that many authors provide hypertext materials, things that add to the original and basic text.

For example, behind the scenes footage, interviews with actors and so on. These texts are available to viewers such that they have the power to extrapolate from the story worlds provided in the original text. They may explore additional areas of interest in ways that may not be immediately available through the primary text, but knowingly and readily available.

These examples embody Landow’s key characteristics of what hypertext includes:

• Reader choice, intervention, empowerment
• Inclusion of extralinguistic texts (images, motion, sound)
• Complexity of network structure
• Degrees of multiplicity and variation in literary elements such as plot, characterization, setting and so forth.