The affordances brought on by the development of the personal computer, smartphone, and recent rise of tablets have mediated the way in which we experience the world; more specifically, the affordances have reconfigured how we share story and literature and also how we hear and/or read story and literature. Technological advances in communication tools continue to blur the boundary between literature and orality to a point beyond just “oraliture” (written and verbal arts), as discussed in the MacNeil reading.
The blurring boundary is due to the availability, affordability, and growing literacy of the technological devices mentioned above. These devices in combination with cyberspace have allowed different forms of media to flourish. A story, for instance, can be told through photographs, texts, and/or sounds; sometimes people combine two or more of these things to create something as simple as a meme or a gif, or something as abstract as an infographic or a vine. A large number of people (prosumers) throughout the world now have access to devices with the ability to create and produce content that is past “oraliture”. Furthermore, cyberspace is currently in an era referred to as “Web 2.0” which encourages “open communication… [and the] open sharing of information” (Beal). Platforms like WordPress, Tumblr, and YouTube allow prosumers to deliver content to the masses. Essentially, information and story can be shared by anyone anywhere today. The death of (professional) journalism and the birth of citizen journalism (CJ) is a great example of how story is being affected by technological advancements. The differences between professional and amateur are becoming less and less clear as the gap between the two closes. Nearly anyone can “report” anything as long as they have the tools and literacy to do so. Sites based on the work of CJs (wikileaks, liveleaks, allvoices) are endless and the content within them as well.
I prefer reading online, whether it’s the news or stories, because of the tools I have at my disposal that help me decipher text; for example, I use a google chrome extension called google dictionary to define words I don’t know just by double-clicking. The same extension can redirect me to a google search page and from there I can get clarification and/or additional information. It’s also a lot easier to read literature electronically because of hypertext; reading a Shakespeare sonnet over Wikipedia (I know it’s shunned in academia but it’s a great jumping off point) with hypertext helps me learn quicker than reading it over an anthology. Although the latter contains foot-and-endnotes, whatever is written on the page(s) stop there. I can get more information in a shorter amount of time through a device with access to cyberspace than I can through something restricted to a sheet of paper. I find hypertext to be quite beneficial but I can see why others might find it a hindrance: it’s easy to get lost in the layers of information. You begin research with three tabs and suddenly your computer’s crashing (am I right chrome users?) But it’s not hard to retrace your steps to get back to start. One can get lost in the abundance of information just as much as they can learn how not to get lost in it.
The availability of information that can be provided by just about anyone makes technological advancements and cyberspace great things. Publishers, gatekeepers, and “the agenda-setting media institutions” are essentially being rid of as technology and its platforms continue to progress (Burns). A benefit is that almost anyone from anywhere can have their stories seen and/or heard, but the flipside is, with the rise of countless CJs, which stories are to be trusted and are worth one’s time?
Works Cited
Beal, Vangie. “Web 2.0.” Webopedia. QuinStreet Enterprise, n.d. Web. 22 May 2015.
Burns, Alex. “Select Issues with New Media Theories of Citizen Journalism.” MC Journal 11.1 (2008): n.p. Web. 22 May 2015.
Gunelius, Susan. “The Shift from CONsumers to PROsumers.” Forbes. Forbes, 3 Jul. 2010. Web. 22 May 2015.
H, Neil. “The Troublesome Concept of “Technological Affordances.” Communication Mediated: A Blog about Media and Other Things. WordPress, 12 Jun. 2013. Web. 22 May 2015.
MacNeil, Courtney. “Orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory. Uchicagoedublogs. 2007. Web. 19 Feb. 2013.
EJ,
I found your blog particularly interesting because I also wrote on this question, from a different perspective. I focused on more traditional forms of literature and storytelling in mine – it hadn’t occurred to me how, for example, images or Tumblr posts or amateur news updates could contain stories too.
You mentioned reading Shakespeare’s sonnets online, and how that was easier because it lets you look up things. I’ve definitely seen online texts do a great job of presenting hypertext within literature. For example I found the Milton Reading Room website really useful when studying Paradise Lost, and the way they have footnotes appear when you click on a linked piece of text is great; it’s something that would be much harder to accomplish in a printed version.
But I wonder about a more modern book that doesn’t contain the same kind of footnote, like one of the Thomas King texts we’re reading this term. Wouldn’t hypertext be kind of unnecessary and distracting there? Or do you see advantages even in that?
Hi Cecily,
I can’t imagine hypertext ever being unnecessary or distracting unless it’s absolutely excessive. I think that eventually most books will be hypertext’d; that is, after people write summaries and analyze them and put them on sparknotes. Or a similar site.
If someone were to go through King’s “The Truth About Stories: A Native Narratives” and hypertext words/phrases that the regular person wouldn’t typically know about, there would definitely be a lot of stuff to hypertext. Page 12, for instance, contains the word Judeo-Christian. That’s one word. King also mentions Genesis somewhere in the first chapter. I think it’s after he compares the native creation story and the Christian one. I personally would want Genesis hypertext’d if I were reading this King book electronically.
With Wikipedia, the community decides which words/phrases are to be hypertext’d and I imagine it would be the same if modern books were to be converted electronically and put on public domain (the same way your Paradise Lost link is).
🙂 – Hyptexting Green Grass Running water is one of your assignments – when we get there, you should look back on this post – thanks