ABSTRACT

Writers are becoming cyborgs who are half-human, half-machine: this is the era of the cyberwriter, digital writer or technowriter. This chapter explores some of the creative possibilities of the new media, and how the people can use these new technologies to experiment with, and change, the way you write. Text on the screen is organised and produced in different ways from page writing. New technologies can transform textuality through hyper-linking, animation of text and interactivity. The most important aspect of the hyperlink is that it is non-linear. Through the hyperlink any piece of text can be juxtaposed with any other. Hypertext fiction was certainly revolutionary, because it induced a fundamentally different way of writing and reading from that required by on-the-page texts. Hypertext markedly increases the interactivity of the reader. Interactivity is very important because audiences become bored if they are passive.