How it could work to
transfer a specific meaning by a link is shown by a passage
in Moulthrop's 
"Hegirascope".
This hyperfiction consists of several nodes containing four
links, which are not found within the text as bold or
underlined hotwords but in the margin. Node 047 starts with
the words "This is the dream of remote control. In this
dream you can press a button whenever you like and totally
reconceive the world around you. Click, you are two hundred
feet tall looking down on sleeping suburbia [
…] " Having read approximately to this line, the
node disappears, turns into a black screen with a single
word in the middle - 'click'. This seems to be the practice
of remote control and of course, this is a false link.
Nothing happens. One has to go backwards in order to finish
reading the dream. One must hurry in doing this, since the
screen changes again and again. So not
only does the reader not get the promised feeling of remote
controls, but rather he feels as though he himself is being
controlled remotely. (see again)
This is a good example of
how the setting up of a link conveys a message which
complements, or more exactly, modifies the meaning of the
letters. The irony of the promise of remote control lies
totally in the linkage. The link is a deconstruction of the
text. However, there is even more. There is a deconstruction
of the deconstruction. Browsing the black screen, the reader
will encounter many hidden links, twice as many as are
provided on regular nodes. The occurrence of these links
modifies the meaning once more by saying: you will not find
remote control if you just click on where it is promised,
you have to be skeptical, you have to look around.
Another example is not
realized, but imagined by Janet H. Murray in her book
"Hamlet on the Holodeck" (1997, p. 176f.). Murray is
picturing "an electronic portrait of Rob's mind on the night
of his suicide": "Thoughts of going for help could be
represented by false links […] Perhaps the
navigating reader would feel impelled to return to a good
memory or to trace it more deeply but would find those
associations closed off, blocked by unpleasant thoughts, or
too difficult to hold on to." Loops could lead to "a single
act of perception that becomes lodged in the mind, like a
roadblock on the path to hopefulness." The contradiction
between the hypertext structure of alternatives and the
alternativelessness of the witnessed thoughts would
intensify the readers feeling of hopelessness and thus of
what suicide is all about.
One of hyperfiction's most
acclaimed features is interactivity, since the reader does
not passively read but has to choose her way through the
story. This claim is rejected by others concerned by the
doubtful nature of this superficial click-interactivity, who
stress a deeper sense of interactivity: the emotional and
mental involvement of the reader. Richard Merwin notes: "If
the reader or viewer isn't necessarily clicking on a
hypertext link, isn't the well-crafted story still engaging
a far more profound part of its reading or viewing audience?
Isn't it engaging, inviting or demanding emotional and
mental participation?"
This objection should be
remembered in the face of accusations that linear text is
merely passive consumption. Interactivity, as well as
intertextuality, are sometimes naively claimed as genuine
features only of hypertext and are on the other hand ignored
as features of traditional text. Hypertext does not
necessarily increase intertextuality. It brings it up to the
surface as something mechanical. However, the link as an
obvious representation of intertextuality, is no less
patriarchal than linear text is accused of being. One could
even argue that in hypertext, the author dominates the realm
of association by marking intertextuality by mechanical
links. The same holds true for interactivity. However,
interactivity in digital literature can have some remarkable
effects as is shown by the next example.
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