I'm So Hyper I Could Text

Wow, I know why "The Garden of Forking Paths" is so familiar. Stuart Moulthrop wrote about it and its importance to hypertext, and he is

a faculty member at UB

and

married to my hypermedia teacher (Nancy Kaplan)

He even taught the class when she had to go out of town. Really nice guy. Here he is .

I found this out by going to a confusing looking site (have a drink before you click on the words) but if you click on commentary,you're find an article that explains why it seems to Garden lends itself to hypertext manipulation. Enjoy -- it seems UB has played a part in all this.

BTW, When you're reading offline, do you find myself sometimes stopping to look up words, cultural references, and the like. I have seen stories and articles posted so that you can click on a term and be taken to a definition/explanation. Actually that is a built in feature of the Kindle; as you are reading, you can highlight a word and get a definition, etc. However I think that might become exhausting after a time. On the other hand, very useful, if you are reading something where lots of tech or foreign terms are tossed about.

Plus it inhibits the desire to go "look it up." Looking up miscelleouus information often leads to wonderfully serendipitous events -- you look up the word, miasma, and discover interesting words around it. You look for quotes with the word and discover a writer you never heard of. Obviously some hypertext nurtures our desire to be led down the garden of forking paths. But in hypertext, aren't the paths preordained links one to another. Won't everyone will discover the same destination and see the same scenery along the way?