Reaction to Beyond Myth and Metaphor: The Case of Narrative in Digital Media

One of my favorite book series when growing up was "Choose Your Own Adventure". The ability to be the maker of my own experience, made reading a fun task.

My reaction to reading "Beyond Myth and Methaphor: The Case of Narrative in Digital Media", presented different types of techniques where hypertext is being used to aid the narration of stories. In my understanding Hypertext is that in which a reader can interact beyond just reading the word it spells, such as discovering a picture or a reference to another similar text.

The author presents one point that I believe is very enriching as she describes how Hypertext can be used to aid narratives:

"By making a choice, the spectator assumes an authorial stance toward the protagonists, since he creates their moral character, which in turn determines their fate. This activity of playing with parameters to see how the system will evolve is similar to the operation of a simulation system. Since the operator of the narrative system is external to the fictional world, he has no interest at stake in any particular branch of its virtual history; gratification resides instead in the contemplation of the whole field of possibilities. The individual forking paths in the plot are therefore less interesting than the global pattern of their interconnections."

This method which in my childhood was presented as part of the books "Choose your Own Adventure" is a good educational tool to help learn more about yourself and the kind of person you are, depending on the choices that you made while interacting with the text.

Another reaction to this reading was that it reminded me of computer programmers. With video game development and computer usage for story telling, I believe the biggest role to tell the story is on the programmer. As a programmer or developer your job is to look inside and outside of your program or code and always predict the next step of interaction with a user.

This by itself I believe is an example of hypertext as users are able to go beyond just simple textual words. We could say that computer programmers are in a way responsible for modern day storytelling. This final statement is also supported by the Author of the article as follows:

Games thus embody a virtualized, or potential dramatic narrativity, which itself hinges on the virtual diegetic narrativity of a retelling that may never take place.