Monday, January 28, 2008

Blog 1

Writing in cyberspace is different than writing as we have commonly known it due to the interactive nature of the medium and the intensity of the need for more and more information immediately if not sooner. This pressure for information and the interactive aspect of cyberspace has changed the way people write. For example, in cyberspace articles are eschewed in favor of commentaries, opinions take precedence over facts, and "good" writing is that which conveys the author's point of view as concisely as possible. In addition, in cyberspace the author's ownership of his work is not clear as the writer may be posting his ideas on a website that he does not own making it possible that the owner of the writing is not the author but the owner of the website. This can lead to confusion and disputes over ownership of an author's work. In conclusion, writing in cyberspace is significantly different than "regular" writing in that the immediacy and intensity of the medium have changed the way people read and therefore the way people write. Conveying one's thoughts in the most direct way possible even if this way is not artful is favored over less direct arty prose as the immediacy of the medium dictates that not only won't today's writing live on for posterity it won't live on past the next person's entry.

1 comment:

S. Chandler said...

Your comment about "[c]onveying one's thoughts in the most direct way possible even if this way is not artful is favored over less direct arty prose" connects to what N. Kathering Hayles has written about how increased preference for online media is changing our "styles" of attention. We will be reading her essay later during the term - and if it is something you are interested in there are others who have written about the changing literacy practices that accompany these different mental processes. This paper is getting old - but has an overview of the thinking in 2001 => http://www.geocities.com/c.lankshear/attention.html