1. Montfort argues that interactive fiction is distinctively different from hypertext fiction, stating: “There is… nothing in the nature of the lexia or the link, those fundamental elements of hypertext, that allows the reader to type and contribute text or provides the computer with the means to parse or understand natural language. […] Hypertext fiction also does not maintain an intermediate, programmatic representation of the narrative world, as interactive fiction does.”In terms of understanding how these two forms relate to/differ from narrative, is this distinction significant? Or are they more closely related that Montfort would like to admit? Discuss.

Yup, it is significant because it is the MAIN distinction between IF and hypertext. Basically, I feel that the two forms of narratives are the same if it were not for the fact that interactors can contribute to the story in IFs, while they can only change the sequence of the story in hypertexts.

Using 'The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' as an example, if we were not able to pick up items, to throw them back down, or to kill ourselves for that matter, it'd just become a hypertext where one just explores a story but isn't able to do anything about it. There wouldn't be that level of interactivity that classsifies it as an IF.

2. Espen Aarseth defines cybertext as a perspective on textuality, which considers a work as a textual machine, and sees the reader as having to make a non-trivial effort to traverse the text. Discuss whether Scott McCloud’s “Carl” comic strip can be considered a cybertext.

It's a textual machine since its got WORDS which we can READ right? Erm... and I guess the non-trivial effort lies in the fact that the comic strip is awfully tedious to read. We've gotta put in effort just deciding which frame leads to where. And after all that effort we've still got to make sense of what it actually means. But that's probably due to the fact that it, in my opinion, isn't well laid out. And it's a form of cybertext because it's been published online.

3. Does a potential narrative such as Paul Fournel’s “The Tree Theatre: A Combinatory Play” satisfy Crawford’s definition of interactivity? Could it be considered an example of interactive media? Why/why not?

To me, it wasn't highly interactive since the choices of statements were really limited. It probably doesn't fulfill Crawford's definition either. Crawford states that interactivity is only achieved when there's the input, process, output sequence. In this play, since the statements have already been decided, the process stage is probably lacking because there isn't much of a need to process.

When it's being acted out in front of an audience, however, it could become more interactive. Actors often change their style based on the kind of audience they get, and processing could take more than just choosing which statement they want, so there'll be a continuous flow of thoughts between actors and audience.