In Chapter 2, Environmental Fiction, I presented the cognitive map, a network of associations in the brain. One of the major benefits of the cognitive map is its potential for innovation. This is where my ideas for creating a networked narrative originated. Because the cognitive map's sequences intersect, it has the ability to activate the discrete units of internal representations in sequences that it never did before. The new sequences are likely to still be relevant, because their associations were built through actual experience. My networked narrative is an analog of this idea. Only this external representation is arranged and networked outside of the mind. By connecting representations in meaningful, overlapping sequences, the resulting structure potentially has the same sort of capacity for problem solving as the cognitive map. Using a sort of hypertextual linking, the reader can move through “The Flocking Party” in sequences that I might never have expected, producing a greater number of meaningful sequences.

The links in the story are small red dots that act as both image elements and textual elements. On each page the dots are located in and amongst the text and images. The destination of their link is revealed when the reader rolls over them. The destination is also meaningfully correlated to the location of the dot. Reading is a process of connecting the dots.

Another way the narrative is more like an environment that may not be obvious at first is the overall design of each page. The mixing of text and images encourages the viewer to take in the page as if they would a scene in the park. Some of the windows and links even reveal new information when the reader rolls over them. When something seems of interest they head in that particular direction, examining images, reading text, or linking to other pages. The movement, even on each page, is contingent upon the particular reader's interests and tendencies. These fields of entry points on each page or node provide enough variation from reader to reader to de-stratify their uni-linear reading tendencies. Every time I read the story myself, I navigate along trajectories that I've never followed before.