Sam Brooker

This paper offers a close reading of Jon Bois’ 17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future as an example of “feral hypertext,” situating the work within both the history of literary hypertext and broader postmodern narrative traditions. Emerging from a popular media context rather than an academic or experimental one, 17776 combines text, GIFs, maps, and video within a linear, scrolling interface to produce a distinctive multimedia narrative about boredom, immortality, and play. We argue that, rather than adhering to canonical models of hypertext defined by branching structure and reader choice, Bois’ work reconfigures hypertextuality through temporal layering, collage aesthetics, and the aggregation of networked media. In doing so, it both reflects and departs from earlier hypertext theory, which emphasised nonlinearity, authorial decentring, and reader agency. By placing 17776 alongside postmodern fiction (particularly the work of David Foster Wallace) we demonstrate how its themes of boredom, abstraction, and simulated space align with concepts such as hyperreality and depthlessness, while also engaging with the affective mode associated with the “New Sincerity.” The paper argues that 17776 exemplifies a broader shift in hypertext from a clearly bounded literary form to a dispersed, vernacular practice embedded within contemporary web culture. This case highlights the limitations of existing critical frameworks and argues for renewed attention to emergent, noncanonical works, suggesting that hypertext persists not as a fixed structure but as an evolving mode of cultural production.

Littoral zones are not merely boundaries between land and water; they are dynamic bridges and buffers, fundamentally shaped by shifting environmental forces. The intangible cultural heritage embedded within these coastal zones (encompassing generational practices of resilience, navigation, and ecological adaptation) is highly vulnerable to loss. Current information systems are poorly equipped to safeguard these living practices. Historically grounded in "urban ontologies," digital architectures inherently favour stability, permanent landmarks, and predictable spatial control. This paper presents a gap analysis examining how existing information systems, from geo-spatial hypermedia to immersive media, fail to capture the fluid, cyclical, and seasonally contingent nature of littoral heritage. By contrasting the performative, ultra-local realities of the coast against the static nature of traditional archives, we outline the structural limitations of current digitisation efforts. Finally, we propose conceptual foundations for future interactive architectures capable of supporting the active transmission, continuous evolution, and structural fluidity required to truly preserve littoral knowledge.

By ‘augmenting human intellect’ we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem or situation, to gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems.” So wrote Douglas Engelbart in 1962, initiating a narrative of augmentation that runs through hypertext's history. To augment is to amplify something: our ideas, our activities, our thoughts. This paper explores hypertext's relationship with computers as intentional machines, its relationship with artificial and human intelligence, and what role it can play in negotiating between the two.

Histories of hypertext have largely upheld a view of its subject as fundamentally interdisciplinary, recognising those phases of outside influence that have waxed and waned over the decades. Film and literary studies, social sciences and book history: ongoing developments in each brought new perspectives to hypertext over the years, leaving its mark on the language we use today. The recent past has seen a revival in such activity, with hypertext increasingly reaching out to scholars from adjacent communities. This work brings new challenges and fresh opportunities for collaboration; at the same time, established language comes under new interrogation as scholars begin to explore hypertext's history in a new way. Drawing on insights from linguistic theory, cybernetics, and critical discourse analysis, this paper explores the dynamics of interdisciplinary collaboration in hypertext research. It examines how language shapes power relations, influences the negotiation of research agendas, and impacts the evaluation of interdisciplinary work in general.

We are entering a period of unprecedented collaboration between authors and computers, where artificial intelligence in particular seems likely to act increasingly in a co-authoring capacity. Automated or procedural storytelling represents one exciting avenue of research. By entering prompts and parameters into an AI text generator like ChatGPT, authors could leverage an enormous textual corpus to generate a “new” work that appears to have been authored by a human. This paper proposes an alternative platform, one more reflective of the collaborative and organic creative process. Approached as a tool for augmentation, Mother showcases the potential for spatial hypertext to work alongside the author.