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How technology affects literature
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A work of literature is not complete until it is presented and critiqued by the reader. Over the years, the means of presentation of the literature has evolved with the availability of new technologies. One of the single most important developments over the past 100 years is electronic media. Electronic media has allowed for literature to be presented not only though a bound book but also audio and video. Electronic media has also allowed for easier, less time consuming authoring and publishing. This new media is still developing today and will continue at a fast pace as long as new technological breakthroughs occur.
When the term “literature” crossed the mind, one may immediately think of a classical definition of literature. Large libraries with stacks upon stacks of books may enter the mind. However, literature in the broad, informal sense can be traced back much further. In order to trace the evolution of literature, the evolution of human communication must first be considered. For thousands of years, humans have told stories through verbal and written communication. The first written communications are attributed to drawings on writings on prehistoric cave walls. Many of these works however are not considered true literature. Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest known literary works and dates to around 2000 BC in Mesopotamia.
Literary works continue to be recorded thousands of years after the initial writings of the ancient world. Up until the last hundred years, this consisted strictly of works that were recorded by an author and then made available to the masses. The invention of the printing press greatly increased the availability of literature. No longer were books required to be hand copied and c...
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...gside managing and preserving digital rights.
Through the years works of literature have been distributed through many different means. These means usually reflect and take advantage of the latest technologies. Dominant sources of literature have changed over time. Today, instead of scouring though the local library’s card catalog, prospective readers will likely log onto Amazon to find the latest book in their favorite genre. Media technology has made communicating increasingly easier as time has passed throughout history. Everyone is now encouraged to use media tools and is expected to have a general understanding of the various technologies available. Only time will tell what the future will hold for electronic media. The present avenues may one day be looked back upon as today’s Library of Alexandria and be just another ruin in the history of literature.
Books today are everywhere. We find them in many households, libraries and schools all around the globe. We find many different types of books; from stories to educational textbooks, we regard them today as sources of knowledge and amusement. But it wasn’t the case before 1455. That year, one of the greatest inventions in human history was revealed to the world; Gutenberg’s printing press. This press allowed printing in massive quantity, spreading books all around Europe and the rest of the world at a fast rate. The printing press had many positive consequences on society. At first, it standardized grammar and spelling, and then introduced the mass production of books. It finally inspired future printing technologies around the world.
Roberts, Edgar V., Jacobs, Henry E. “Literature.” The Lesson. 470-475. Toni Cade Bambara. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. 2001
The introduction of the printing press changed society permanently. Along with this invention came the emergence of mass production of texts. Suddenly, information could be efficiently replicated, thus facilitating the dissemination process. Widespread alphabetic literacy, as Havelock states, could finally become a reality. Print media, however, are fundamentally restricted by their physical nature. Enter the Internet, arguably modern society’s greatest technological advancement, with its ability to digitally recontextualize the written word. Again, forever changing the nature of communication. This paper will focus on the web’s functional, social, and cultural remediations of print media. It can be argued that the Internet is a modernized version of the printing press. The web created an explosion in production, self-published content, and new forms of machine art. Through contrasting physical and digital print media, it will be shown that the Internet enhances aspects of the printing press in defining itself.
In Gutenberg’s time, not everyone was educated. There was not enough time to hand-write hundreds or even thousands of books. So, instead of learning, people worked. In 1448, Johann Gutenberg made it possible for many people to learn. The printing press was a machine that could write many books with ink. Around this time there was a w...
First, he provides an overview of the history and development of the book as well as the development of reading. Carr analyzes and explains the effects of these developments on the individuals. Furthermore, he notes that the Internet recreates and alters a medium’s content by the use of hyperlinks, which ultimately distracts readers, and by separating the content into organized chunks. These characteristics make the content “searchable” which stimulates skimming behavior or superficial reading. As a result, readers retain less information due to the lack of deep, analytical reading. In addition, online texts often incorporate opinions, beliefs, or skewed viewpoints of certain topics, which can have negative effects on readers. Carr also addresses that some opponents believe that hardcopy reading was a result of “impoverished access” (111) and that the desire to use the fast paced web is a result of a quickening pace of life and work over the past few
Humans have been using written language to communicate ideas with one another since as early as 3200 BCE in Mesopotamia. Since then, every great civilization has had a written language, each with its own unique characteristics. However, it was the writin...
The invention of the printing press revolutionized fifteenth century era European communication. With the progression of technology the translation of information moved from spoken word to written word, and then to print. Separate experiences and mentalities developed depending on their reliance on spoken verses written word. Spoken word was unreliable and didn’t transport information quickly or safely enough. Written word often took months to transcribe and were hand-written which is difficult to comprehend and facilitate. Print became the method of choice, producing books
Bradbury attacks loss of literature in the society of Fahrenheit 451 to warn our current society about how literature is disappearing and the effects on the people are negative. While Montag is at Faber’s house, Faber explains why books are so important by saying, “Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores” (79). Faber is trying to display the importance of books and how without them people lack quality information. In Electronics and the Decline of Books by Eli Noam it is predicted that “books will become secondary tools in academia, usurped by electronic media” and the only reason books will be purchased will be for leisure, but even that will diminish due to electronic readers. Books are significant because they are able to be passed down through generation. While online things are not concrete, you can not physically hold the words. Reading boost creativity and imagination and that could be lost by shifting to qui...
First, I will give a brief history of early printing in Spain, the evolving political landscape at the time and the influence it had on manuscript production, as I feel it is necessary to understand how that environment shaped not only printing, but also literacy in the New World. Followed by a discussion and outline of printing in colonial Spanish America and how books being printed there differed from early manuscripts in Europe. The essay concludes with a summary of how education and open dialogue has influenced the character and the direction of how books are made in these parts of the world today.
We know that art came before literature because scholars dated cave art farther back in time than the first writing. Humans started creating cave art for one main reason, to worship/ask the gods and goddesses for items or animals that they needed. They did this because they needed food so they thought if they asked the gods for the item or animal, then the gods might give them what they requested. They started to draw what they need onto small clay tablets because it was getting harder to transport information around when one person had to remember so much at once. They wrote with stone tools or their fingers and engraved their writing onto walls, or clay tablets. That's where art and writing came from.
Within the 20th Century, many changes happen in the world due to the dominant of technology. As a result, in the field of literacy, the forms of text, knowledge, and learning has been changed to adapt the new changes in the field of technology and respond to the need of the society. Gunther Kress, in his article “Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning,” he argued that the new forms redefine the role of author and reader and transform the process of reading and learning; however, on the other hand, they take away authorship and create crisis for both reader and author. I totally agree with Kress on both issues of gains and losses, and I will present evidences to support those claims.
Literature plays an important role as a part of the cultural heritage. Thus, literature is the soul of our civilization, the center of our religion, and the machine we can travel back in the time of our old civilizations. In addition, literary works are able to take the readers beyond the limited experiences of readers’ lives. They show the lives of others. The literary works covey the social, political, and cultural backgrounds of the time when the stories or novels were written. The author of the book, “The Death of the Author,” Roland Barthes expresses that authors are always the agents of their times. According to the statement conducted by Roland, to get the fully understanding of the text, he recommends
Baron, Dennis. “From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literary Technologies.” Writing Material. Ed. Evelyn Tribble. New York. 2003. 35- 52.
Marshall McLuhan writes, "The alphabet and print technology fostered and encouraged a fragmenting process, a process of specialism and of detachment. Electric technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement" (8). With the added dimensions hypertext provides, a piece of literature is capable of evolving into the multi-dimensional realm of sight, sound, movement and tactility. Researching information related to a topic, such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, for example, offers an interesting sample of the evolution of literary resources on the WWW. One such site, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, not only offers scholarly information with images, but also inc...
The evolution of media has transformed the way we interpret the world around us. It gives us a new perspective by allowing us to interact with one another through the Internet. Media has become much more personal and diverse as user-generated content becomes more prominent in our lives. We are exposed to assorted types of viewpoints that shape our understanding and knowledge of the social world. Moreover, change in technology has brought advancement to transportation methods, which makes it very easy and fast to go long distances than before. It has also brought change in communication, with the development of the mobile phones, where the communication is now more efficient. Technology has also brought changes in education where students can do online courses, take exams, quizzes, do assignments and even discuss with the classmates the related topic of each week as if you were in the actual classroom. The changes of technology play a big part in the media and how it is used. The technological changes made throughout these time periods have made communication and the media widely spread.