Hypertext and “the hyperreal”

Abstract

As the technology of hypertext matures and becomes widespread, the changes it brings to textuality will affect all fields of writing, including those associated with literature. Using an important recent work of hypertextual fiction as a focal point, this paper offers a perspective on hypertext informed by literary and social criticism. It invokes Jean Baudrillards distinction between technologies of displacement (the robot) and technologies of augmentation (the automaton) to argue for the design of texts and systems that are accessible and enabling rather than opaque and objectifying.