Object-Event

The contour is not entirely an object and therefore it is not strictly speaking computable, though there may be ways to approximate or represent contours in terms of computable objects (Bernstein 1991). The contour is more like an event, an interactive transaction between the reader and the hypertext. But unlike the "virtual text" of print reading (which is all event), the contour does have a materialized component: the backtrail of lexia visited by the reader, a history which virtually all hypertext systems maintain as an articulable record. The contour is thus both object and event, a concept that defies strict categorization. It is in this regard that the contour becomes useful as a synthesis, a structure for apprehending both the dynamism and the stability of hypertext discourse.

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