Linear Reflections on Hypertexts

To read a story from beginning to end can be relaxing.

The feeling of just going along with the story, and not having the world demand anything of you for just a few moments, is fantastic.

However, hypertexts disrupt the going-with-the-flow-mood, and suddenly demands are being made again.

You have to make your own choices and you are to affect the story by these choices.

I write “have to”, because the story won’t read itself, and maybe that’s just the point.

If you don’t make any choices, the story won’t proceed, and in this respect, hypertexts quite resemble life.

They have, likewise, adopted the randomness of life.

A randomness that we eternally try to control, by making choices that we believe will yield the result we were aiming for.

I find myself attempting to do that with hypertexts as well.

Choosing the right words to click on might bring me to the plot I wish to read.

Alas, as with life that is far from always the case, but if I stick with it, it might just bring something amazing with it in the end, if I could just find the end…