Hows do literatures content reflect technological forms in the digital age PDF

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How does the content of literature reflect technological forms in the digital age...

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How does literature’s content reflect technological forms in the Digital Age? The Digital Age has offered more than a fair share of fascinating works in the technological sector of its ever-expanding world of infinite resourceful content and multiple possibilities ranging from virtual augmented reality that questions the substantive boundaries we have as humans in experiencing the outside world, to the immense archives of information contained in the network of servers that is known as the internet, perceived as many to be an erratic engine fed by unknown forces. This lecture course has some comparable features to that of the Digital Age. Although, it has a guided outline of the learning goals and the added material of the course it is still as unpredictable. Everchanging opinions accompanied by multiple pathways that could be taken by a student’s perspective as topics are explained supported by texts and facts that leads them to a conclusion of cliff-hangers and anti-climactic endings that leave the reader experiencing a plethora of opportunities they could take to explain the topic at hand. However, the introduction of Digital Age combined with the already established world of literature creates a new change, one that could be labelled as “radical” in a world of agnostics of advanced technologies. In 1999 Eliza T. Dresang, on the topic of the Digital Age and its effects on the learning capabilities of the youth, stated that

“Radical change, as a theoretical construct, identifies and explains books with characteristics reflecting the types of interactivity, connectivity, and access that permeate our emerging digital society. Think of the concepts of interactivity, connectivity, and access and how often we seem them at work in the world around us daily through the technology on the Internet, CD-ROMs, and cellular phones. We also experience them in relation to people, e.g., in the planning process and in the learning teams that contemporary school districts often utilize.” (Dresang and McClelland, 1999). Nowadays, we aim to make ourselves known through digital means and confess to society our most intimate thoughts and grievances with social medias and electronic tools. While previously pen-to-paper methods were used and kept safe and only for the authors eyes, in todays society we are expected to share and discuss with others. Formerly, print-based works such as books, novels and poems to name a few were more difficult to publish, however, today with the use of digital tools like the internet, it is much easier for an audience to be created and attention is much easier gained through this tool. This has also gained attention in a negative connotation, invoking comments of a harsh nature that aims to break down and humiliate an aspiring creative personality. This essay will discuss how the literary creations of the digital age has been influenced by technological forms of the current age and how authors utilize them to create a story and will also focus on the themes of connection, disconnection and the idea of a multiverse.

The theme of connection and disconnection is attentively balanced in Egan’s novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad. Structurally, the novel highlights the way in which the character’s lives are akin together. Characters from a single story in the beginning of the story appear in later stories as less important faces and are replaced by previous background characters in the stories where these characters were less prevalent. For example, the story “Ask Me if I Care” is narrated by Rhea and includes Jocelyn as a side character. Furthermore, later in the novel the story “You (Plural)”, the roles are reversed, we are given Jocelyn’s role as narrator and Rhea as an associate. How these characters lives are connected, and how this connection makes it traumatic for the characters, shows through the juxtaposition of the two stories. The continuously connecting stories also shows similarities to a network with the characters roles being switched in these stories helping serve as a motif for a network in the novel, also creating a network of characters that can be interchange depending on the story being told. These characters can be almost compared to chess pieces as they are swapped around from story to story depending on their importance to the story being told and their relationship with other characters. The idea of disconnectedness is prevalent in the story “Pure Language” in which Alex takes a job in Marketing for a Social Network with Bennie, he becomes hesitant to share his new job with his wife because of the stigma connected with this type of marketing. There is tension developed in story surrounding Alex’s daughter who becomes fascinated with technology and demands to play with her father’s phone. This paints technology as a problem for the family as it disconnects Alex with his wife. However, toward the end of the story technology prevails as Alex uses his phone to locate his wife and daughter in a crowd by texting her. This in turn connects Alex with his wife once again. Although the stories in the novel depict technology as the main source of the problem, it eventually ends up being the solution, in the final moments it appears as a gesture of hope that help the characters stay motivated and conquer their dilemmas.

The idea of a network of characters implies that there is a social network these characters are picked from. This social network idea comes from the internet another technological tool that is the overbearing power of all these different digital tools that the author compares to such as networks, social medias and cellular phones. Through the internet new forms of language can be created, forms of language such as hypertext. Hyper-text is a way of representing text about a topic where other topics can be linked e.g. the language that web pages use, HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language), is a text document which is related to another text document. (Smith, 2017). Authors have taken this form of language and manipulated it into writing their stories. A prime example of this would be Robert Coover’s, The Babysitter, as a story written in the style of a hypertext. in 1992 on the topic of hypertext and how it influences his writing, Coover declared that.

"Hypertext" is not a system but a generic term, coined a quarter of a century ago by a computer populist named Ted Nelson to describe the writing done in the nonlinear or nonsequential space made possible by the computer. Moreover, unlike print text, hypertext provides multiple paths between text segments, now often called "lexias" in a borrowing from the pre-hypertextual but prescient Roland Barthes. With its webs of linked lexias, its networks of alternate routes (as opposed to print's fixed unidirectional page-turning) hypertext presents a radically divergent technology, interactive and polyvocal, favouring a plurality of discourses over definitive utterance and freeing the reader from domination by the author. Hypertext reader and writer are said to become co-learners or co-writers, as it were, fellow travellers in the mapping and remapping of textual (and visual, kinetic and aural) components, not all of which are provided by what used to be called the author. (Coover, 1992)

The traditional features of a non-linear path in a hypertext is converted in Coover’s story by using a non-linear narrative, jumping forward and backward in time during the storyline with multiple decisions and outcomes made throughout. For example, the babysitter will invite her boyfriend over, and not invite him over. He will call her, and it will go well, and it will go poorly. The multiple paths presented in the story mirrors the hypertexts features of “multiple paths between text segments”. An example of a modern day interpretation of hypertext format can be seen in video games, for example the video game development company Tell-Tale makes “choose your own adventure” games where the player is given multiple options to choose from when continue their journey with multiple outcomes and endings. This creation of multiple possibilities with different outcomes and different endings could all be connected under one title, being a multiverse of storylines, this multiverse is created by the narration of each story being told in a different way with the same event being played out in different ways by the same characters sometimes interchanging certain background characters much like the network of characters used in “A Visit from the Goon Squad”. For example, in one outcome of The Babysitter, Jack’s friend Mark comes with him to watch television at his girlfriend’s house and in another version he’s not there. This multiverse is experienced all at once through this storyline, showing that most of these storylines, when experienced, have grave consequences such as a version of the story where Jack and Mark come to the house and rape the babysitter. The whole story is narrated by a third person that remains unknown, who remains close behind the consciousness of multiple characters. The theme of a multiverse being created is felt through the Coover, revising the turn of events, presenting multiple outcomes for every character and every moment, without weighing one over another. Everything that could happen does happen. Which also means is does not happen (because not everything can happen), this is where the multiverse title comes into play. This title is in place so that everything doesn’t get too confusing for the reader it separates all these outcomes into their own different universes where they play out separately from each other.

In order to expand our use of literary devices we must think outside of literature itself. Coover once said “I am floating in a world made entirely of text” (Kunzru, 2011). In order to tell a good story, we must think outside of the box of literature and words itself, we think of technology as a good pairing with literature as much of the components of technology itself started with words on a page, an idea that came to life. Technology has had a major impact on the way we think, share and discuss nowadays that it has made its way into every aspect of our lives. The way we read, the way we write and the way we process information all have a significant point where technology plays a part in the finishing process. Writers like Coover and Egan have broken the boundaries that once separated the technological side of the world and the literary side and brought them together to deliver their fascinating stories and opinions of technology. Through these stories’ technological forms are presented as a force of good and an ominous being of power that controls the way we make decisions in our reading of a story and how we connect our opinions to the world around us.

Bibliography

Coover, R. (1992). The End of Books. [online] Archive.nytimes.com. Available at: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/27/specials/coover-end.html [Accessed 20 Oct. 2019].

Dresang, E. and McClelland, K. (1999). Radical change: Digital age literature and learning. Theory Into Practice, 38(3), pp.160-167.

Kunzru, H. (2011). Robert Coover: a life in writing. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/jun/27/robert-coover-life-in-writing [Accessed 21 Oct. 2019].

Smith, M. (2017). [online] Available at: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-differencebetween-Hypertext-and-Intertext [Accessed 19 Oct. 2019]....