Live hypernarrative and cybercartography: You are here, now

This article explores some of the potentialities of narration in the context of cybercartography. We have developed a new kind of dynamic or "live" form of hypernarrative, in which the content and structure of stories is determined by live information. This system would ultimately allow the creation of hypermedia narratives capable of mining public databases on the fly in order to customize and integrate narrative material appropriate to the user's particular temporal and geospatial context. Unlike other forms of hypermedia, a live hypertext narrative can actually be different every time it is read. More akin to an improvised performance than to a recorded one, a live hypertext changes depending on where and when it is accessed, and on what is happening in the world and on the Web. Live hypertext thus presents a new development in the history of writing that challenges our inherited notions of the stability, fixity, and even authority of printed text. The role of live data and the spatial and temporal aspects of the data suggest strong connections to cybercartographic environments. Not only are the same data sets relevant to both hypernarrative and cybercartography, but the nature of the hypernarrative shows new possibilities for cartographic environments. In particular, narrative and end-user navigation in a story show new ways of involving users, a key principle of cybercartography