“Home’ is where the heart lives”

Here is something else to think about that words ‘do’ – with words we create metaphors, and metaphors are both real and not real. “

***

At the beginning of this lesson I pointed to the idea that technological advances in communication tools have been part of the impetus to rethink the divisive and hierarchical categorizing of literature and orality, and suggested that this is happening for a number of reasons.

“Being active in all kinds of social media myself, I have a couple of good examples of the advantages and disadvantages of social media.”

It is interesting how many people read my question as a prompt to measure advantages and disadvantages of new digital technologies. Why is that? The question explains itself clearly enough. I am asking people to think about technical advances in context with orality and literature, most specifically in context with a narrative that wants us to think in divisive and hierarchical categories. The question is providing “ the impetus to rethink the divisive and hierarchical categorizing of literature and orality,…”

So, why do so many responses go directly to categorizing the impacts into good and bad; advantages and disadvantages? – this is the same old narrative that wants to divide and categorize; to create binaries and make judgements: good and bad. This is the narrative that needs to be ‘unlearned’.

I’d like you to consider two aspects of digital literature: 1) social media tools that enable widespread publication, without publishers, and 2) Hypertext, which is the name for the text that lies beyond the text you are reading, until you click. How do you think these capabilities might be impacting literature and story?