by Kathleen O'Brien
While exploring the possibilities of hypertext fiction I have been studying all modes of imaging with words through technology. There seems to be a creative, collaborative evolution of language taking place, and a common interest in reassessing identity. We have created an intangible reality, a liquid space that is constantly moving and changing.
The medium of the computer has given us a new magic. We can come together with our stories and project them on a lighted screen. In the private space of the computer we have personal revelations and we are invited to participate in those of others. Framed by the monitor the right combination of words can have more power than the printed page because they speak to our private space. For the first time author and reader interact. We can exchange our information in digestable amounts.
Italo Calvino said, "Long novels written today are perhaps a contradiction: the dimension of time has been shattered, we cannot love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears."
I, like many others, am excited by the possibilities presented by this medium. At the same time, as we put forth our truths, and lies, might some mutation occur that could damage our ability to see the difference between the two - or inhibit our ability to care? Is there to be a revelation of substance that will bring us all closer to our creative potential, or are we all involved in a veiled conceit?
I am reminded by another Calvino passage: If on a winter's night a traveler, outside the town of Malbork, leaning from the steep slope without fear of wind or vertigo, looks down in the gathering shadow in a network of lines that enlace, in a network of lines that intersect, on the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon around an empty grave-
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