Does cyberlit turn writers into
programmers?
Technology drives cyberlit. That is a given.
But, by its very nature, technology is always changing . And while new
technology is the force which drives cyberliterature, it can also be its
Achilles heel. Writing is an extremely cheap art-form to practice, the basic
requirements being pen and paper. What, though, are the basic requirements for
cyberliterature? A computer with an internet connection, special software, a
website with domain-name registration, an understanding of website design, and
HTML or XHTML, at the very least, perhaps a digital camera as well as an
image-processing package, and often much more. "Authors of hyperliterature don't
have to be computer programmers," states Edward Picot in his Slope essay,
Hyperliterature: Apotheosis of Self-Publishing?, "but they certainly do have to
know a good deal more than how to set pen to paper."
Cyberwriters, like all writers, face the challenge of making the words do what
they envisage, but they also face the challenge of its technology. In other
words, the hypermedia poet or fiction writer who's also his/her own designer
faces double-duty. "I don't want to exaggerate this aspect of hyperliterature,
because it is my personal belief that original and exciting work can still be
produced using nothing more than HTML," continues Picot, "but equally it must be
admitted that some of the most striking recent works in the field must have
taken a lot of technical know-how to produce."
A cyberwriter walks a fine line between "the desire for impressive graphic
effects and the need to keep download times to a minimum to preserve reader
engagement," states Carrie McMillan in her article Hypertext HyperHype. "There
is a real danger that writers of hyperliterature may begin to concentrate on the
hyper at the expense of the literature," she adds. "They may become so involved
with the technology that they become uninteresting as writers, or they may allow
a desire to enthrall and astonish their audience to get the better of their
concern to say anything original and deeply-felt." (…)
It may simply be the case that the technology involved in hyperliterature will
become too complicated for individual writers to cope with, with the result that
the hypertexts of the future will be team efforts rather than individual
ones—either teams of writers working together, or individual writers working
with technical experts.
The skills "required to produce exciting work that might gain a large audience
on the net may become unreachable to all but the lucky or technically
dedicated," predicts Digital Fiction's Andy Campbell , and even those who might
want to do it all, may not be able to. "Collaborations between graphic
designers, programmers and writers are already spreading; although there are
overlaps, everyone is being strictly pushed back to their own specialty." In
fact, current literary e-journals exist that invite collaborative submissions,
celebrating cross-genre works. Of course, any collaboration is not without its
own danger. If the hypertexts of the future can only be produced by teams of
people, worries McMillan, they may become almost impossible to bring out on an
independent and self-financed basis.
Is this the end of hypertext's golden era or just the beginning? Keeping it
simple or hazarding the complexities of collaboration—which will it be? The
answer may be "both." Future cyberwriters will become not programmers but
designers of their own visions either by reveling in simplicity or the
experimentation complexities of collaboration, embracing future technology as a
new century's tools for creative expression.
Marshall McLuhan believed that content follows form, calling media "the
extensions of man." That certainly seems true with writing in cyberspace. The
"insurgent" technologies will "give rise to new structures of feeling and
thought, new manners of perception."
And those new perceptions must, naturally, take into account the "other"
language, the language of the computer that allows a writer's vision to come to
cyber-life. In considering his experimentations with a new software—the "'neath
text," as he calls it—cyberpoet Jim Andrews offers philosophical thoughts about
the uneasy relationship between the very human feeling of poetry, the ghostly
creative muse, and the mechanical feeling of creating poetry via computer: It is
apparently ironic that we use machines to convey our humanity, but the irony is
only apparent when we acknowledge the ghost in the machine and acknowledge also
that we made the machine for the ghost to travel in...The "'neath text" is to
some forbiddingly technical and automated. Yet the ghostie may appreciate it,
the ghostie neath and above and around the "neath text".