Jay David Bolter talks about, in the second chapter of Writing Space, the shift from writing to typing as a natural part of life, and gives many examples of the shift of writing through the ages. He talks about the Greeks beginning to write on papyrus rather than telling stories orally. Then they went from papyrus to codex. And in Western Europe handwriting to print. Will electronic text take over print text, just as the others took over?
This transition between print to electronic text, that is taking place, is similar to the western Europe movement of handwritten books to print. This caused a huge controversy especially with the Catholic Church. Since books were handwritten there were very few copies and only the influential seemed to own them. When print came about and it was possible for the lower class to own a book, most importantly the Bible, the Church was furious and skeptical. Did this cripple the Clergy's power over the congregation when ordinary people who weren't ordained by God were allowed to read the Bible? Did this movement make the audience homogenous?
This question is being asked today with the conversion of print to electronic text, but with a twist. Instead of the audience being the same, are the writer's being homogenous? With electronic text my writing and many other amateurs writers are able to publish there work and have the same chance of people reading it as the next best selling author does. The fact is I am a terrible writer but I can still publish my work speeling mistaks and all. Who gave me permission to let people read my work?
I left these questions unanswered so that you may tell me what you think.
No comments:
Post a Comment