March 1, 2009
Years ago, when I was using Multimate word processing software because it was like the Wang, I decided to switch to Microsoft Word for two reasons: (1) I figured Microsoft would be around for a while; and (2) Word let me do italics and boldfaced text.

Then along came hyperlinking, the real inspiration for THE BOOK OF O’KELLS, a technology that actually pre-dates the Web by many years. All of sudden text went from being an endpoint to becoming a launching pad into cyberspace. Pretty cool—but so what? Nobody has really figured out what to do with hyperlinks other than to link to the most obvious place. Look at Wikipedia or newspapers who hyperlink from a public figure to a plain old biography.

But what lies beneath the text? Instead of a direction sign—go here—what if a hyperlink was a trap door or a secret passageway? What it took you somewhere you did not expect to go? Sure, it breaks the basic contract with the surfer of the Web, but when you write the Supernovel you get to do what ever you want, as long as you have what passes for a reason. Or maybe the text is a window onto additional layers, the way videogames are sometimes created. Like the aforementioned fourth or fifth dimensions: forces unseen acting for reasons unknown. Something found deep within a hyperlink could be the key to the entire BOOK OF O’KELLS (Who knew?)

So there are endless unspeluncked possibilities when it comes to hypertext in the Supernovel. Though online, the presentation of hypertext is much more text than hyper—a way to point to a point of reference or further explication. The link is inherently non-linear—it points you from point A to point B to no point—but even so the method exists in service to the original text. In other words: you go from point A to point B to the next point and that’s where the linking ends. Once you’ve left the linear you’ve entered another linear experience with its own hyperlinks to the next and then the next. They are all points of elaboration, typically useful, that never take you into the fourth or fifth dimension of possibility (so to speak).

This is theoretical and confusing but nonetheless a way to see that possibilities abound. Bold text and italics are still text, albeit with a twist, but hypertext is something else entirely, and I’m not sure that anyone (including me) really gets all the possibilities. In hyperlinking, you can literally go anywhere for any reason—and you might never come back.