Planned Obsolescence

To my this was an eye-opener for discussions on the role of the libraries to promote the shift towards Open Access.

This is a fascinating example of the way that technologies have changed the way that writers interact with the creation and development of their work. You suggest that word processors create more spontaneous and fluid documents than the stop-and-start method of longhand or a typewriter, which might create more “drafts” but less cohesion. I wonder what difference collaborative online methods like Google Docs will have on a new generation of writers? In an era where the creative process is increasingly public, the act of writing itself becomes more like a conversation. You raise a lot of really interesting questions about how the process of writing changes when the format changes.

As a student, I like the idea of being able to comment on individual sentences, despite the programming drawbacks that it could cause on the website.  If I were analyzing a text for class, much like we are with this text, I would like to see what my peers thought about more specific ideas instead of paragraphs.  It would give us an opportunity for more focused discussions/debates in fewer words at a time.

I really like that this passage and the preceding paragraph call the reader to personally reevaluate themself as a writer.  The monumental changes that have affected the literary world, even SINCE the technological revolution, require an author to observe the new opportunities available to them.  Instead of being overwhelmed by the infinite pathways and tools at your fingertips for writing, it seems best to focus on ourselves and maintaining our personal image and style.

In stating that “the chain of being” of the book has deteriorated  as a result of hypertext, do you mean that hypertext has done so because it has introduced reader-author interaction or because e-books (and the hypertext they contain) has created a new hierarchy of its own? Hypertext certainly referencs the pattern of an author’s thoughts in a manner the print book cannot possibly imitate, but do hypertext and commenting on an author’s text change the nature of the author’s authority, or do they change the framework by which his/her authority is supported or challenged? I suppose what I wonder is if the authorial and textual hierarchy is erased with hypertext and open commenting, or if it is merely placed in a structure where more interaction can challenge the author’s authority, particularly since the text has already been written before said interactions are introduced?

In stating that “the chain of being” of the book has deteriorated  as a result of hypertext, do you mean that hypertext has done so because it has introduced reader-author interaction or because e-books (and the hypertext they contain) has created a new hierarchy of its own?

Hypertext certainly referencs the pattern of an author’s thoughts in a manner the print book cannot possibly imitate, but do hypertext and commenting on an author’s text change the nature of the author’s authority, or do they change the framework by which his/her authority is supported or challenged?

I suppose what I wonder is if the authorial and textual hierarchy is erased with hypertext and open commenting, or if it is merely placed in a structure where more interaction can challenge the author’s authority, particularly since the text has already been written before said interactions are introduced?

This paragraph really brings up the issue of design in text and not in digital books. Being an artist it really effects my opinion of the transition to e-book. Personally I can see both side but I still prefer books to an iPad or nook.

This article really made me think of the real definition of an author. It makes me realize that in some for everyone is an author like everyone who colors is an artist.

You wrote a wonderful phrase here:

“Some part of the difficulty comes from a sense that someone else’s opinions might interfere with my thought processes, confusing my sense of the issues that I’m exploring before I’m able to fully establish my position.”

Ironically, I think about this problem quite a bit, and I am envious that you made the remark so well. The question I have is this: Does the advent of technology and its interconnectedness enhance or mar our ideas and authorship?

On the one hand, I would argue that that technology’s gift of piles of information to us gives us more with which to conceptualize our ideas, but on the other, I wonder if it also mars our ability to return to original sources and formulate from page one. I’m honestly not certain, though my ideas are already begin shaped by the first source to which I was introduced for this-your book

This is a splendid way to begin this chapter!

This is crookedly parallel (excuse my oxymoronic language) to the authorial world and to technology in literature. The author, on one level, possesses an idea that perhaps has yet to be named. Using Newton as an example, his idea was not one that did not exist. We lived in gravity before it was named, but Newton named the concept and explicated the science of it. He did not, however, create the concept himself. Hence, the crooked parallel to the literary author, whose ideas were perhaps in existence before they were named.

The ideas of a literary author, then, may be original insofar as they are derived from an individual conception of the world, even if it is based in a more communal reaction to the communal experiences and natural processes.  But the question remains:

Are these original ideas,  unnamed ideas, or merely original arrangements of previously mentioned ideas?

Then, with the advent of technology, this Newtonian giant idea is complicated further. Are we standing on the shoulders of  original giants we created when we use technology, or is technology just a framework for new arrangements of already proposed ideas of the author?