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Concept
Cybertext
Résumé
Cybertext as defined by Espen Aarseth in 1997 is a type of ergodic literature where the user traverses the text by doing non-trivial work.
Cybertexts are pieces of literature where the medium matters. Each user obtains a different outcome based on the choices they make. According to Aarseth, "information is here understood as a string of signs, which may (but does not have to) make sense to a given observer." Cybertexts may be equated to the transition between a linear piece of literature, such as a novel, and a game. In a novel, the reader has no choice, the plot and the characters are all chosen by the author, there is no 'user', just a 'reader', this is important because it entails that the person working their way through the novel is not an active participant.
Cybertext is based on the idea that getting to the message is just as important as the message itself. In order to obtain the message, work on the part of the user is required. This may also be referred to as nontrivial work on the part of the user. What this means is that the reader does not merely interpret the text but performs actions such as active choice and decision-making through navigation options. There is also the existence of a feedback loop between the reader and the text.
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. In Aarseth's work, cybertext denotes the general set of text machines which, operated by readers, yield different texts for reading. For example, in Raymond Queneau's book 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.
Cybertext can also be used as a broader alternative for hypertext, particularly as it critiques the critical responses to the latter. Aarseth, together with literary scholars such as N. Katherine Hayles, maintains that cybertext cannot be applied according to the conventional author-text-message paradigms since it is a computational engine.
Source officielle
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