Nonlinearity

According to Aarseth traditional literary theory defines a text in terms of: Reading: A text is what you read, words and phrases that you see before your eyes and the meanings they produce in your head. Writing: A text is a message, imbued with the values and intentions of a specific writer/genre/culture. Stability: A text is a fixed sequence that cannot change.

Two main perspectives on “texts”: Informative: The social, historical side of a text. This includes practices of reading;the choreography of the reader. Interpretable: What makes the text different from other texts.

What are the practices associated with these texts? What are their potentials?

Texts are a cross product between the: Linguistic Technological(mechanical conditions) Historical(socio-political context) Texts are not simply a string of words. “There will always be context, convention, and contamination.”

Cybertext Operato r Text/Machine Verbal Sign Medium

In terms of topology texts consist of smaller units and relations between them Graphemes (letters) Lexemes (words) Syntagms (phrases or sentences) Aarseth finds that none of these indicate nonlinearity by its presence and so purposes a new set of terms to describe the units of a nonlinear text.

A Nonlinear text consists of the following units: Textons: The basic element of textuality. Scripton: An unbroken sequence of textons. Traversal Functions: Mechanisms that combine textons into scriptons.

The combination of these units give us differences in: Topology: A nonlinear text does not present its textons is a fixed sequence. We might think of a linear text as one that has fixed textons. Dynamics: The contents of scriptons change while the number of textons remain the same. I.E. you will always read the same pages but the order that you read them may change.

The combination of these units give us differences in: Determinability: The stability of the traversal function. I.E. a game where the same door leads to different locations. Transiency: Does the passing of time cause scriptons to appear? Maneuverability: How easy is it to access the various scriptons? Maybe easy, maybe a link is hidden.

The combination of these units give us differences in: 1.The explorative:The user decides which path to take. 2.The role-playing:The user takes on a particular character in a “world”. 3.The configurative:Textons/traversal functions are designed/chosen by the user. 4.Poetic:User’s actions are aesthetically motivated.

Some Examples:

I Ching 1.Classical Chinese book of divination B.C. 3.Inspired Leibniz who developed the binary mathematics used in today computers. 4.Made up of 64 hexagrams which are combinations of six whole or broken lines. 5.I ChingI Ching

Guillaume Apollinaire's “Calligrammes” No clear sequence of reading. 3.ExamplesExamples

Marc Saporta Composition No. 1 Roman A novel where all pages, minus the first and last may be shuffled like a deck of cards and read.

Ted Nelson Conceived Hypertext You've head of this one?

Joseph Weizenbaum Eliza Computer simulation of a Rogerian psychoanalyst. 3.First 'Chatterbot'. 4.ExampleExample

William Crowther & Don Woods Adventure First text adventure game. 3.Originally released on ARPANET. 4.ExampleExample

Roy Trubshaw & Richard Bartle MUD Inspired by Adventure. 3.Multi-User Dungeon initially a multiplayer text adventure game while later MUDS such as TinyMUD allowed users to create 'textual objects'.

William Chamberlin The Policeman's Beard is Half Contructed Created with the commercial dialog program Racter developed by Chamberlin. 3.ExampleExample