My theme this week has been contemplating networks and paths taken to get to where I am today. In this post I attempt to make an analogy of hypertext to my ’40-something’ pandemic brain bringing a heightened sense of awareness of my current state and circumstance. The idea came to me after conversations amongst friends since COVID-19 started where we have shared experiences of reminiscing and wondering all the ‘what ifs…’ and ‘I wonder what happened to…?’ questions; examining poor life decisions, lucky breaks and everything in between. For example, friends and I have told stories of reconnecting with old teammates, partners, friends, and telling tales of people we haven’t thought about in years. There has been more time for self-reflection and analyzing ‘how did I get here?’ and what would have happened if I would have chosen a different route in 1989 or 1993 or 2001. My post has a ‘butterfly effect’ feeling to looking back on how choices have shaped my existence. And how life, like hypertext, life is fluid and multilinear.
Hypertext is a way that readers move though text and space, as Bolter (2001) says, ‘a path through virtual space’. In his description of interconnected paths where topics can have several routes, it got me thinking of the Twine task and hypertext as a ‘What if?’ story. I am where I am today because of the choices and paths I took; jobs, partners, degrees, places visited and friends made. Or on the other side, the fiancée that was not to be, the trip not taken, the fight with a family member unresolved. As with linear printed word, my life has taken one path through physical space, but that is not to ignore the other paths that could have existed based with altered decisions. What if you could see your life as a multilinear Twine game to see all the other paths that were not taken and have the ability to examine the entire process? Like Bolter (2001) suggests, the hypertext allows the reader to access the whole text in the way a printed book cannot; the hypertext makes content less rigid and not fixed.
I have ZERO experience with Twine, but creating on it reminded me of fortune telling in elementary school….the kind that even pre-dates the coolness of cootie catchers. We used to play a game called MASH to predict our future. Here is a MASH game that my nine-year-old son made for my Twine story, complete with choices (his ideas based on his perception of what I would have been like as a 12 year old!).
Here is my attempt at a Twine. Honestly, I was not interested in learning Twine at this point, so my story is very basic. However, I found that this exercise was useful to connect ideas of hypertext to fiction writing and understanding how technology has opened up text to become less fixed and more networked.
References
Bolter, J. (2001). Writing space: computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. New York, NY: Routledge.
Hilarious! I can so clearly remember playing these games and the sense of injustice I would feel having to marry the wrong person, or live in a swamp and drive a tractor. Your game had me laughing out loud and going back to replay and revisit all your options. On my first play-through, I got right to the end, so I think I nailed it! Does that mean I am doing good at the game of life?
So true! Drive a tractor is one we didn’t use, but that would have been awesome. Everyone wanted a Corvette and to live in a mansion (and secretly marry a boy in our class named Morgan!). It was in the pre-cootie catcher stage….so I imagine you also played skipping games like Cinderella and Apple, Peaches, Pears and Plums? I was in elementary school from 1981-89 and it was quite the time! Thanks for replying to my post, Emily.