Application

The concept of cybertext offers a way to expand the reach of literary studies to include phenomena that are perceived today as foreign or marginal.^[5] In Aarseth’s work, cybertext denotes the general set of text machines which, operated by readers, yield different texts for reading.^[6]

For example, with a book like Raymond Queneau’s Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, each reader will encounter not just poems arranged in a different order, but different poems depending on the precise way in which they turn the sections of page.^[7]

Examples[edit]

An example of a cybertext is 12 Blue by Michael Joyce. Depending on what link you choose or what portion of the diagram on the side you pick you will be transferred to a different portion of the text. So in the end, you do not really finish reading the entire story or 'novel' you go through random pages and try piecing the story together yourself. You may never really 'finish' the story. But, because it is a cybertext the 'finishing' of the story is not as important as its impact on the reader, or on the conveyance.^[8] Stir Fry Texts, by Jim Andrews, is a cybertext where there are many layers of text, and as you move your mouse over the words, the layers beneath them are 'dug' through.^[9] The House is another example of a cybertext where one might assume a description of the piece as follows: It is an unruly text, the words don’t listen, you are not supreme. You are guided through the piece. This is a cybertext with minimal control. You watch as something unfolds before you, “a crumbling mania,” you must be able to go with the flow, to read texts upside down, to piece together a reflection of words, to be okay with texts half read disappearing or moving so far away so continuously that you can not make out those very important words.[