Interactivity And Open-Ending (Literary Works)

Interactivity and open-ending are two concepts which have gained popularity with the incursion of hypertext in the field of literary creation. However, their meaning is not unanimous as there is a multiplicity of coexisting definitions. This chapter organizes definitions in two poles, which mark two different approaches to the study of literature in the age of the new information technology: the technophile and the technosceptic or Luddite approach. From these two perspectives, different theories have evolved with respect to the meaning of interactivity and open-ending as applied to the analysis of digital and print literature. This text also addresses how digital literature has challenged important literary conventions which affect the role of the reader and the concept of narrativity, two pillars upon which the covenant between readers and writers had been traditionally based. Finally, it offers a discussion which elucidates some of the most important misunderstandings between technophiles and Luddites regarding those terms, and proposes a third view, the New Humanist perspective, which arrives at a consensus between both approaches to literature in the new information age.