Forking Paths

Many credit Jorge Luis Borges, and his story "The Garden of Forking Paths" (El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan) published in 1941, with creating hypertext. What could we possibly mean by that? Let's look to the story to see, and also to the useful and clever "Story Shapes for Digital Media" by Katherine Phelps. What does it mean for narrative, for a story, to bifurcate? What does Borges describe and dramatize, that later writers and media makers attempt to create?

And then we'll connect this to our first foray into Lev Manovich's book, The Language of New Media, and prepare ourselves for the Unity 3D workshop we'll have in our next class session. It is not too early to mull over whether you are more interested in making a game, or a cut scene, or something else for your course project, although you won't know for sure until you try a little of each. Forking paths, indeed!