Hypertext's ability to function in a manner similar to memory - indeed the whole concept arose from Bush's "memex" and the attempt to create a semantic network of associative connections - is perhaps its greatest attribute. Fisher demonstrates the non-linearity of time and memory, and of the sometimes paralysing effect of making choices and guessing the outcome:
It's always like this for me - this way or that way? If I kill the butterfly, will I become a dentist? These are the living Traceys. All the possibilities like a thick web, a giant layer cake all around me make the decisions less difficult. If everything's going to happen anyway, why bother? Until the bigger question - why do I remember this and not that? Why do I choose to be nine here, now.
Fisher foregrounds memory as an interface that can be entered from any point, as an entity that is changeable and heteroglossic.
|
