Hypertext as Art

The Oulipo introduced the concept of the "choose your own adventure" stories. Though, it the context of their work they played with the concept of potential literature. It was something not yet created but through the participation of the audience became a whole. A key element here, however, is the artists ability to dictate possibility. He has control. The concept here is that the artist creates the potential literature, and the participant creates the art. I wonder how our notion of art is challenged when the artists ability to have some control over the end result is removed. Specifically I am looking at humanities interaction with the web. The web is so huge today that we, in effect, are always participating in a huge choose your own adventure story. The only difference, however, is that there is no individual person that has set out all the possibilities. Could one argue that social discourse, as it exists in an era of new media, is humanities collective art piece. Once, when media was more controlled, social discourse was very much the result of government and corporate influence, and many would argue that those controlling the media were artists of sorts. Now we see less and less of this control. A million voices scream out on the web, attempting to dictate the discourse, but few voices have much impact, and those that do never fully control. Who is the artist of today's living narrative?