Hypertext interaction revisited

Much of hypertext narrative relies on links to shape a reader's interaction with the text. But links may be too limited to express ambiguity, imprecision, and entropy, or to admit new modes of participation short of full collaboration. We use an e-book form to explore the implications of freeform annotation-based interaction with hypertext narrative. Readers' marks on the text can be used to guide navigation, create a persistent record of a reading, or to recombine textual elements as a means of creating a new narrative. In this paper, we describe how such an experimental capability was created on top of XLibris, a next generation e-book, using Forward Anywhere as the hypernarrative. We work through a scenario of interaction, and discuss the issues the work raises. collaboration between the two writers and the reader; instead, the participation is unintentional, unacknowledged, undefinable. The reader's engagement with the text has been shaped by forces of nature (the wind), not by a thoughtfully designed user interface.