Cybertext is an interactive text in the sense of cybernetics,which requires substantial interactive operation to produce verbal signs,and thus it is inaccurate to view cybertext merely as digital text related to computers or networks.Cybertext theory challenges the traditional literary theories dominated by interpretative practices that are based on print literature.Informed by the worldview and methodology of cybernetics,cybertext theory discusses the possibilities of integrating textual media.It shifts the focus from formalistic concerns with verbal signs in 20th-century formalist literary theories to the materiality in the production of verbal signs.It introduces the theory of media functions and shifts the emphasis from studying the semantic functions of the texts to the study of their media functions.Its emphasis on the materiality and functional elements of textual media also changes the mode of textual semantic research,that is,from exploring the nature of meaning to its generative mechanisms.Cybertext theory has its own distinct terminology,research objects and methods,and the important theoretical issues it addresses within its research paradigm deserve ongoing investigation.
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