Article in a print journal

I've yet to encounter anyone who reads hypertext fiction. No one, that is, who isn't also a hypertext author or a journalist reporting on the trend. Surely those readers, however few, must exist, but what's most remarkable about hyperfiction is that no one really wants to read it, not even out of idle curiosity.

Hypertext is sometimes said to mimic real life, with its myriad opportunities and surprising outcomes, but I already have a life, thank you very much, and it is hard enough putting that in order without the chore of organizing someone else's novel.

The end of books will come only when readers abandon novels for the deconstructed stories of hypertext, and that exodus is strictly a fiction.

Currently organizations such as Turbulence.org and the Electronic Literature Organization provide major funding for new net.art projects.33 Countering generally accepted assumptions that the WWW is a medium catering to business and entertainment industries, much of this visual art furthers the reach of Situationism and psychogeography into the virtual space of the World Wide Web, offering new ways that aesthetic defamiliarization and poetic détournement may spatialize and release the pleasure of federated moments of time.