(%) Like this study, Janet H. Murray explores the future of narrative as it is developed and used in cyberspace. In her book Hamlet on the Holodeck, she looks at the digital medium of the computer and what it does for storytelling. The new aesthetics that develop with this medium and the new questions it raises for issues of authorship also interest her. In the end, she believes that this new medium is going to offer us the chance to experience new meanings through stories told and read in ways as never before.

Espen Aarseth looks at the history of ergodic literature in Cybertexts. For Aarseth, a cybertext is an ergodic, or open, dynamic, text that is mechanically organized (1). To better understand how the advent of the computer has shaped the developed of ergodic texts, he looks back at older dynamic texts, such as the I Ching (9). While this study looks at how the computer can be used with older mediums, Aarseth hopes to use our experiences of past open texts in older mediums to help us better shape cybertexts on the computer.

Richard Lanham writes about the place of literary studies in this digital revolution. In his book, The Electronic Book, he looks at the digital revolution and how it has spawned a host of digital art forms and artists working within this new medium. He is interested in the changing position of the ordinary book in our electronic lives. For the most part, Lanham sees a great potential in digital media, but both Lanham and I also see a lasting place for print media as well.

In The Noise of Culture, William Paulson also looks at the place of literary texts in the information age. Like Lanham, he is interested in the positive effects of this digital revolution, but he also worries about some potential problems. He fears that we may substitute understanding and knowledge with possession of information. Or in other words, we may begin to suffer from information overload, unable to process the overwhelming amounts of information we are bombarded with daily. Similarly to Lanham and to me, Paulson thinks that literary texts will continue to flourish. He believes that textual books will help bring organization to the surplus of information so that we can understand and learn from it.

J. Hillis Miller looks at narrative in this day and age in his book, Ariadne’s Thread. He is quite interested in how we interpret stories as they occur in different mediums, specifically the discursive manuscript and the electronic book. He looks at the similarities and differences of narrative in these two mediums. By focusing on issues of repetition, line, order and chaos, he shows how hypertext is developing its own way of telling stories. Unlike the above theorists and myself, Miller believes that the electronic book is going to replace the textual book.

(*) In A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari entertain the idea of words that can be disseminated across a matrix, whether it be electronic or not. They write about the rhizome of language and they write rhizomatically. Words are roots stretching and gnarling, connected together by their meanings (5). The rhizome is this diverse root structure full of "bulbs and tubers" in which "any point . . . can be connected to anything other" (7). Hypertext makes obvious the rhizome of language. It is an organic structure of roots and branches curving and connecting together. Words are roots, links that send us off into the branches each time we click on them. The form of this study is rhizomatic as well; words, colors, fonts and images are links, recontextualizing different sections of the document to be together, just a click away, even if they are separated when printed out linearly on pages.

In Terminal Identity, Scott Bukatman directly explores the virtual subject that has arisen from the rhizome of the web and from science fiction pieces that speculate on the developments of cyberspace. In his discussion, he analyzes such contemporary science fiction works as William Gibson’s novel, Neuromancer, and the film Alien directed by Ridley Scott. Throughout he examines how our images of ourselves, of space, and our bodies have all been strongly influenced by the ability of computers to give them an identity in a virtual world. Bukatman believes this "terminal" influence has both separated and reconnected our minds and bodies. Both he and I are interested in how virtual personas help shape our narratives on the computer.

($) Brenda Laurel looks at how computers allow us to act in her book, Computers as Theatre. She sees the screen as a stage in which both writers and readers enact narratives through the medium of computers. The drama enacted within the computer screen is related to the dramas that have been enacted on the stage for years. The difference for Laurel is that the screen demands that writers script for the audience’s actions as well as those written in the piece. So, the actions that take place when a reader interacts with the hypermedia portion of this study will have to be scripted in order for the narrative to unfold.

(ß) A study of the process and structure of various mediums would be incomplete without mentioning the work of Marshall McLuhan. He is seen by many as the forerunner for the field of media studies, and in his many books and articles, including, Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man and The Medium is The Message, he fully explores what the medium itself means. Whether is be hot or cold media, McLuhan investigates how mediums shape the messages we try to send to each other. The message of this study is being shaped by each of the mediums employed, creating a different message than if only one medium was used.

(°) Donna J. Haraway looks at how we have constructed more than discovered our ideas of nature in her book Simians, Cyborgs and Women. With a strong feminist focus, she looks at how science has studied and fictionalized the reproductive nature of primates. Most famously, she declares that we are already cyborgs, beings that have both organic and technological aspects. Our hiking boots, our contact lenses, our down-filled coat and many other objects are all technological prosthetics that expand our capabilities. Hypermedia is a part of our cybridity. It changes our conception of narrative by allowing us to construct computer personas with which we act within stories. We can dream of how technology will improve our lives, but by looking at ourselves presently, we can see how technology has already helped construct our experiences.

In her book, The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age Allucquère Rosanne Stone examines the ways in which developing technology is challenging our culture’s notion of identity, particularly along the lines of gender. The tension between the old and the new interests her. She looks at how new technology allows us to manipulate our gender identity more than ever before. Stone believes the combination of old techniques along with new technologies allows for amazingly positive, but also potentially regressive, realizations of what it means when we say who we are. While we gain the ability to create (or not) virtual personas of various genders who act within stories, we also lose some of the distinctions of meaning found within a story with an author and a reader.

( ¬) Bruno Latour focuses on the dreams and attempted realizations of technological development in Aramis, or the Love of Technology. In a book written from multiple points of view, he examines the story of Aramis, a guided transportation system that almost became a functioning part of Paris but in the end failed for a variety of reasons. Latour is interested in these various reasons and why technology and its development needs political and monetary support in order to become realities beyond the drawing board. In the end, he illustrates the complicated and intimate relationship between humans and their technologies. While Latour illustrates the narrative of technological development, this study will illustrate the technological development of narrative.

My proposed study has a slightly different focus than the theorists discussed above. Like Murray, Aarseth, Lanham, Paulson and Miller, I am interested in the effect hypermedia is having on narrative. The difference between them and me is that they all focus on how narrative is developing in this new medium as compared to other, older mediums (text, film, etc.). I am also interested in this, but with the goal of using hypermedia along with other mediums to tell a story. Unlike the other works, this study is not solely a textual discourse on the subject of hypermedia and narrative. It is a scholarly document that examines and illustrates in various mediums in order for narrative to be related and experienced in a different way.

Deleuze and Guattari, Bukatman, Laurel and McLuhan explore different aspects of digital narrative that help to sharpen the focus of this study. Like Deleuze and Guattari I am trying to write rhizomatically. They do so to explore the rhizome of language, while I am looking at connecting a narrative across mediums. Bukatman looks at both what we have done with personas on the computer and what speculative fiction authors have posited we could do. I believe the formation of a persona helps to give readers a place within a hypermedia narrative where they can begin to act and explore the story. Like Laurel, I believe that a digital narrative gives readers a space within which they can act from the place of their personae. And since this study is not only expressed digitally, but textually and visually as well, McLuhan’s explanations on the way mediums are related to each other and how they shape messages help me connect and use the various mediums involved in this study.

Haraway, Stone and Latour all narrate how technological advances change our activities and abilities and give me examples of how to illustrate these changes. Haraway and Stone both look at how changes in technology can have positive and negative effects on how we see ourselves. Hypermedia does open up new and different ways to tell stories, but it is not the end-all be-all of narrative. There are many older mediums through which we relate and experience stories and that have had hypertextual characteristics long before the computer. This study is going to be a hypertextual connection between old and new mediums. Latour illustrates the process of how technologies develop and become ubiquitous parts of our lives. For better and worse, the nature of narrative is changing on the computer. By analyzing and performing within old and new mediums, I will show how narrative is changing even if the story remains the same.

This study is looking at the tension between the old and the new as seen in the narrative structure and process of different mediums. I am analyzing and illustrating how we tell each other stories through new and old mediums, and the combinations of them. I believe a choreography of old narrative techniques along with new technologies allows for amazingly positive, but also potentially regressive, realizations in the nature of what a story is and can be.