Greetings,

This post is a response to question 7 in lesson 1.2, and will attempt to address the ways in which aspects of “digital literature” are “impacting literature and story” in the modern world (Paterson, Lesson 1.2).

I am eight years old, sitting at my parents old desktop computer, the one that still has to use the phone line to connect to the rather primitive internet connection. I’m on a mission, a quest, like the Arthurian Knights I love to dress up as. I’m on the hunt for stories, expanding on a literature that I’ve recently devoured like the starving little cub I am. I am hungry for knowledge, in this case knowledge about an era that hasn’t yet earned the title “steam-punk”. I don’t even know how to spell the name properly, but with the tenacious fervor of the young, I doggedly pursue primitive search engines for any new material to sate my insatiable obsession. Having consumed everything Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has ever written about his erstwhile detective, I’m searching for some new literature, a new story to capture my imagination, but with those same beloved characters. I discover the world of pastiches and parodies(they’ve updated a little in recent years), long before I know what the words mean, scrolling through antiquated pages of text that are mere cue cards in digital form. These pages contain no extra information, not even the hyperlinks which I will later take for granted when browsing for information, instead I’m forced to write things down to look up on a new page later. It is laborious, and mostly fruitless, and my first attempt at internet searching. I’m looking for something that doesn’t really exist yet, in a world of cutting edge technology that hasn’t quite left the old world behind yet, hasn’t quite matured, much like its user.

I am ten, finding my first ever online Holmes story, printing over a hundred pages which I quickly loose in dust and time, bookmarks still a physical object stuck between the pages of my favourite novels.

I am twelve, discovering a world which I’ve only dreamed of, where anyone can write something down, expanding on existing literature, or inventing a whole new story, imperfect in its gloriously unpolished creativity.

I am fourteen, discovering my tribe through a digital medium, scattered across half the globe and yet right beside my desk.

I am sixteen, an auditory learner doing distance ed-i.e., reams and reams of printed digital text that makes no sense really- who has always struggled with math, suddenly pulling straight As because the teacher chooses an alternative teaching method, posting recorded videos of himself walking one through the steps to solving equations, teaching orally from a completely different city.

I am nineteen, a decade long Tolkien fanatic who suddenly finds a like minded individual to geek out with, using Yahoo Messenger to have a virtual conversation, words typed, tantalizing pauses between key taps instead of breaths, but no less oral, no less “real”.

I am twenty-one, clicking a link on my instructor’s blog, discovering added information about a topic which enriches my reading and learning experience, and engages me with the dialogue in a deeper way, by drawing me in to the topic, that coloured text daring me to click, to discover, to join the conversation and the rest of the world.

The narrative above is designed to highlight some of my own personal experiences with digital forms of literature. As highlighted above, digital mediums such as social media and hyperlinks fundamentally change and reinvent the way we perceive stories and literature, rewriting them, adding depth and layers of meaning which were previously unstated. In the case of the hyperlink, enabling us to learn more about a topic with the click of a button. This is both amazing, but perhaps also damaging. If finding information is now that easy, surely more people will learn about a given topic. But, what happens to traditional research skills. Are they no longer relevant? And what about our imagination? If everything is explained by the click of a button, what is left to the reader’s imagination? Are we no longer passive readers, or were we ever passive at all?

Hypertext’s effect on literature and stories is perhaps more about structure and format than content or medium. In other words, hyperlinks add extra layers of information, and make accessing information much faster and easier, but often act much in the same way appendixes, footnotes, reference books or dictionaries would in printed texts. However, hypertext takes this added information to a whole new level, allowing readers to access information and make connections which ordinary text simply doesn’t have the layers or tools to provide access to. Landow of Brown University suggests that by “emphasizing connections and relations” hypertext “changes the way texts exist” and “the way we read them”(Landow, 1989). This highlights the connection MacNeil makes between orality and digital media, suggesting that digital mediums, in this instance hypertext, could perhaps function as a form of orality, providing information as instantly as if someone was speaking it to another person.

Perhaps an even more obvious change in literature and stories since the advent of social media is the increasing ease with which informal publications, writings, and stories can be circulated, often unedited or published, and even more often for no profit at all. My own personal experience lies more in the world of the so-called “Fanfiction” phenomena, which involves the informal, non-profit publication and sharing of fan writings about existing literatures-the ultimate answer to that hungry questing eight year old.

In more mainstream spheres, the world of blogging has fundamentally changed who can allow their voice to be heard, and who can tell a story and have some expectation that more than the handful of people they meet will ever hear it. More recently, sites like Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook have created features which not only allow stories to be circulated, but allow the authors-and the rest of the world-to know that someone is listening. Reblogging and retweeting can cause one story or idea to be nearly instantly circulated between millions of people, creating an entire new literature of thought and ideas, seconds after the original “author” posted. Tumblr and Twitter also raise points in favour of MacNeil’s observations, as audio and visual files and links become intermixed with text, creating the so-calleld “mixed media” of social media. In these ways, readers become listeners, observers become authors, those who previously have no voice and no way of being heard have an avenue to circulate their stories and ideas. And yet, just as Chamberlin points out in his story about the man who declined to tell his stories because nobody would understand them any longer, it’s not enough to just have a platform to speak on. People have to be willing to listen. Even more importantly, people have to be willing to listen with the realization that it’s possible they won’t understand what they will hear.

References:

Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. AA. Knopf. Toronto. 2003. Print.

 

Fanfiction: Unleash Your Imagination. Fanfiction.net., 1998. Web. May 22, 2014.

Landow, George P. “Hypertext in Literary Education, Criticism, and Scholarship.” Computers and the Humanities. 23.3 (1989): 173-198. Web. May 23, 2014.

Livejournal. Livejournal, Inc., 1999. Web. May 21, 2014.

Louden, Jennifer. “Find Your Tribe.” Jennifer Louden: Savor & Serve. Jennifer Louden, 2012. Web. May 22, 2014.

MacNeil, Courtney. “Orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory. Uchicagoedublogs. 2007. Web.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 1.2: Story and Literature.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies Canadian Literary Genre. UBC, 2014. Web. May 22, 2014.

Redmond, Chris. “Sherlockian.net: Traditional and Print Pastiches.” Sherlockian.net. Chris Redmond, 2014. Web. May 22, 2014.