Storyspace and Sentient Life

After the lab last Tuesday of reading and exploring "Patchwork Girl," I tried to think about hypertext in a sort of abstract way, thinking of anything that could be similar to it before the age of such technology. I found many similarities within the realm and definition of hypertext, specifically the hypertext program 'Storyspace,' and human or even non-human animal life. Every sentient being is its own, as are the different 'patches' of writing presented in 'Storyspace.' When a writer uses such a hypertext program, all of the different pieces of the story are placed in somewhat of a random fashion, until they are linked with one another to create relationships in a larger scheme of things. This works in the same way in humans. We are all one in ourselves, but our relationships to other humans link us to yet even more humans that in turn create a big web of meaning, just as in hypertext. As in 'Storyspace,' these linkages can change over time. Humans can get get in a horrible break-up, give birth to a baby, or brutally murder someone, modifying or severing many links in the web, similar to how a hypertext writer can rearrange the pieces in the story to change the whole meaning. Making these relations between humans have become easier over the past decade, with such things as e-mail, Facebook, and Myspace. However, one does not need these sort of electronic networking engines to successfully juxtapose hypertext and sentient beings.