Also, while progress in building software systems has been very disappointing, it has turned out that building hypertext systems is easier than it once seemed. And they last a lot longer than we once expected them to last. So the systems problem, while still an active area of research is not nearly as frightening. What has turned out to be much more complicated than we appreciated in the old days is the problem of hypertext writing. In fact the problems of rhetoric for these odd new digital media, of ways of writing, of ways of talking about the writing and of figuring out how the craft works and how it might be done better, have proven to be much more difficult.
Writing is harder than people think.
That is probably an understatement. But in thinking about evolving interactivity, we have to move past stories that are made in the context of confined authorial voice speaking to a listener that stays in the position of listening until the author shuts up, so to speak. And this idea of interactivity must be where some of the complications exist, re-defining how we have been socialized to think of our roles as tellers or listeners. There are other areas of art that have also been exploring new formulations of author and audience. Especially in the past fifty years.