IX  X    

---

VI:28.  The question of interactivity is, however, a useful tool in the interrogation of the “writerly” text, the reader’s participation in the creation of meaning. Espen Aarseth, in the course of his work on textuality in its new domains, has attempted to outline a method for categorizing different varieties of textuality, regardless of delivery medium. [TEXTUALITIES] Interactivity per se does not enter into his discussion. To radically simplify his scheme, he assesses texts on the basis of their Dynamics (static or alterable); Determinability; Transience (does the text reveal itself with the passing of time or must it be looked over/worked at); Perspective (allowing role playing by the reader or not); Access (random or controlled); Linking (explicit or conditional or no linking); and (the most complex scale) “User” function (interpretative or explorative or configurative or “textonic” which implies the ability of readers to co-author the text). Such a scheme allows him not only to characterize and analyse the widest range of textual phenomena, including the extraordinary, richly interactive textuality of MUD and MOO spaces, but also to make some useful broader categorizations, such as that between hypertext and cybertext or ergodic and non-ergodic literature. [MOO]

---

    IX  X