Hypertext Cities

Louisa likens a hypertextual story that changes each time you read it to visiting a city every couple of years. At first I thought, woah, the scale seems a bit, well odd. Then I thought about it, and at least for me it is the small differences, along with the big, that make up change in the city. That tower over there, different. A big thing? Sort of, for itself, but in the scheme of the entire city, nah, it’s a small thing. So if I think of a city as something big and complex but it is actually made up of very specific, different, local bits (that suburb, that street in that suburb, even that shop on that street in that suburb), then it is a good way to ‘get’ what the hypertext theory is about. The entire work is the city. But it isn’t any one thing, and there are, oh, how many ways to make my way through this city? But it’s still the city, isn’t it? Gee, the more you think with it, the better an example it becomes.