What is the Future of Electronic Literature?

What is the Future of Electronic Literature?

Writer Kenneth Goldsmith released a key article on the tenth anniversary of September 11th. Goldsmith published an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education outing electronic plagiarism. The article discussed popular releases in the burgeoning field of the study of hypertext literature. He mentioned critic Marjorie Perloff who hypothesized that the truly internet savvy individual is one who navigates information online. Perloff suggests that the idea of the alienated internet cowboy is outdated. Goldsmith, however, grappled with the question of whether this is indicative of an over-flowing amount of information. Goldsmith wrote,

it seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing: with an unprecedented amount of available text, our problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information... I manage it, parse it, organize and distribute it... is what distinguished my writing from yours.

What, then, is the future of electronic publishing in so harried an age? If scholars like Goldsmith and Perloff are right, perhaps it is time that we stop and examine what electronic literature already is before continuing to create more information. The endless stockpiling of information that we are currently producing makes it immensely difficult to keep track of what is actually happening in this field.

After all, you have instruments such as the WayBack Machine. This large database cataloged information in the realm of digital literature. But, how are we supposed to keep track of the WayBack Machine itself when some of the information being added to that database is from 2004? If we consider the year 2004 as the distant past, as evidenced in the way we store it in a database, then this suggests an error in the way we have been recently taught to record information.

The world's approach to public policy has changed dramatically since 2011. For instance, one only has to look at the above Facebook banner to recognize that they way we share information is different. The Facebook community has usurped the concept of the collective memory and changed the way we record current events. An eyewitness account or personal testimony on Facebook can be seen as more reliable than traditional journals. Provided, that is, that consumers rely more on their peer groups for information than commercial products.

This revolution of the transmission of information, which cutout the tradition pulp machines cannot be stressed in importance enough. The global community, in lieu of neocolonialism, has expanded in the digital realm. The world's landscape has changed. People, therefore, have looked to individuals for the purpose of more accurate, eyewitness reporting. After September 11th, it became clear that the information we receive (at least here in the United States) is biased and lacks a personal perspective about world events. It is unfortunate that it took a global tragedy to draw attention to national politics.

September 11th is the birth of a new, electronic consciousness. The Internet became the way that people could learn about one another directly without the bias of traditional print media. The way we communicated, recorded collective memory, and measure the past all changed during this decade. This is so important that the true birth of digital time for the masses should be seen as happening at on September 11th and continuing until two days ago. The first decade after September 11th should be referred to as Y-1, Electronic Literature ([Y-1, EL, or 1ELs]) within academia. What this decade ushers in is still unknown, but we know that life as we know it, has already begun to be recorded differently. Since 2004 is already considered an antiquated time, then surely, we should revisit the aughts and record what has passed in academia and world events.

Jennifer Sussex is a writer, student living in Ann Arbor, Michigan.