Douglas’s reading begins with the prompt:
What if you had a book that changed every time you read it?” —Michael Joyce (1991)
The more I thought about this, the more I realised how remarkably true it is.
Every time you read the same book, your experience with the book changes every time. Whether you read a book at different ages, or even at different times of the day, each reading will be distinctly different from each other. Whilst the text may not change, the experience certainly does. Hypertext and nonlinear media is like “the book that responds every time you read it – responding to your moods, your whim, your latest fetish…” (p14).
Douglas writes, “if the book is a highly refined example of a primitive technology, hypertext is a primitive example of a highly refined technology” (p. 15). She writes that hypertext is still in the “icebox stage,” meaning it hasn’t yet evolved to the more ‘mainstream’ or average version (such as the refrigerator). She explains that hypertext is a mechanism/technology which allows media makers to extend the boundaries of writing to create new and meaningful artefacts.
I enjoyed thinking about Douglas’ idea of “the inexhaustible story” (p.13). Essentially, this is what hypertext stories are, as they have endless possibilities for connections and reconnections which mean they never truly end. They are inexhaustible. Infinite. Never-ending. This idea is one that excites me very much because I love the kind of culture whereby its parts continuously build off one another in order to reinforce and strengthen it. However, I wonder if I will begin to miss the idea of closure as I move more into this nonlinear space.
Lastly, Douglas speaks about the role of the reader in hypertext, and also multilinear, media. I still don’t know whether it is limiting to use the term ‘reader’ when discussing these kinds of media, as I have come to learn that users are so much more than just passive readers, but are actually in turn producers themselves. Douglas writes that the author can never determine what the reader will take from a story, and I believe this is similar Adrian’s musings about authorial intent which claim that the reader should let go of any notion that what an author intends is relevant. I think these two ideas blend into each other quite complementarily.
Everything is intermingled. Or as the below image suggests, interwingled.