Remember the Novel? How Future Technologies are rewriting the words of the past

After a lifetime spent teaching English literature to Yale University students, literary critic Harold Bloom was taken aback, when in 2003, the National Book Foundation – presiding over the famous National Book Award – named Stephan King the year’s recipient of its National Book Foundation Award. In an article penned for the Los Angeles Times, Bloom sited that , ‘by awarding it to King they recognize nothing but the commercial value of his books, which sell in the millions but do little for humanity than keep the publishing world afloat.’ What Bloom has shrewdly vocalized is the decline in the value of first-rate literature. Names like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, O’Connor, Mailer, Plath and other literary giants have been assigned to the dust of used bookstore shelves.

What he called the ‘dumbing down of American readers’ is but one cell in the virus attacking the tradition of the novel. While the decline in intelligently written novels is nonetheless a disturbing phenomenon, the novel itself has become lost in the milieu of electronic devises that are rapidly threatening the sanctity of the written word. This is happening for two reasons: firstly, technological advances, most notably the internet, have over time, replaced traditional mediums that contain literature, and secondly, the way humans interact with one another is changing from personal to virtual.

Recent advancements in technology are creating physical distance between the novel and the reader. While one could argue that books and films, for instance, have coexisted since the middle of the 20th Century, the popularity of the novel did not erode until technology bridged the gap between the movie theatre, and the living room couch. The technological proliferation occurring at present has broadened our capacities to travel – via car, plane, train, foot and skateboard, to hotel rooms wired with complementary hi-speed – while downloading, watching and burning movies. Amidst this whirlpool of motherboards, I am begged to ask: does anybody remember the novel?

One possible explanation for the evaporating love of the novel is that our vision of the novel has become disconnected from past nostalgias. In other words, the things we read are more and more appearing in the virtual sense, in forms we cannot touch and feel. This impersonal shift has re-established, to a degree, the physical distance between humans and novels. It is worth mentioning the antithesis: readers will always be readers, and therefore loyal to the novel. However, the novel will disappear because it fails to attract new readers, and in failing to expand this base, those left standing under tradition’s umbrella will fade away, leaving this once-sacred love unprotected from the downpour of technological innovation.

Adding to this, the nature of human contact itself is revolutionizing. Older, more traditional forms of contact, such as letter writing and telephone conversations have been reduced to condescending names like ‘snail mail,’ or have been replaced by the stranglehold computers and cellular phones have in dictating ‘instant messages.’ What is left are populations of people corresponding electronically, and not personally. This adds up to reducing material for the novel that would otherwise be available through personal contact.

It is in this shift, from personal to virtual interaction, through the advancement and convenience of technological innovation, where the substance of the novel is not being experienced to the degree it once was. Consider if you like, science fiction: 21st Century innovation and iPods are not creating newer, more exciting forms of science fiction, anymore than they are producing newer, more exciting science fiction novels – the popularity of which may still be considered a cult. What is happening is a renewal of the recluse at the extreme end, and a new population of humans whose sole interaction with the novel is through eBooks, on the other.

So, how does this affect the novel? Personal interaction creates the mouldings in which we place characters. One need not shake hands with everybody they meet; however, simply noticing different personalities becomes a challenge when being Blackberried to the point of dependence, or when listening to an iPod while walking down the street. The more our senses are canalled through technological devises, the less we are to notice the peculiarities taking place around us.

During a recent trip to Japan, a friend and I were making our way through hoards of daily commuters in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district – truly a sight to see – when I took a moment to notice the happenings inside the train car. Everywhere I looked, I saw people – young, old, student, and business professional, even a child under five – staring intently at a cellular phone, a PSP, iPOD, or personal computer. This got me thinking; how many personal relationships would be spawned in this subway car, if only people would look up from their text messages long enough to meet a stranger?

Though we may never know the answer, this troubling addiction has become institutionalized and engrained in the nature of 21st Century communication. No longer is it one-on-one, face to face; it is more like face-to-interface! Created by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the World Wide Web, since going public in 1993, has grown from an innovative alternative, to life-support system. Commenting on the central role the internet plays, former US President Bill Clinton stated in his recent book, entitled Giving, that when he took office, the internet was home to ten websites. Today, he writes, there are about 50 million websites accessible to the public.

As the effectiveness and viability of the Internet to be used as a smart tool for business networking and communications became more apparent, its transformation process began, ushering in a new collaborative atmosphere to the global conversation; if two minds are better than one, how about 3 billion minds? In many ways, the Internet has facilitated the gathering forces of globalization, enabling conversations to begin in one place and end in another.

In the context of literature, the Internet has proved an effective method for self-publication. Through live journals, weblogs, and MySpace, anybody with a message can create a website, and begin contributing to the global conversation. In many ways they have created an entirely new domain for freelancers and news personal to report on the events taking place around us. What is more, Internet jobs can be conducted from home, and in the era of high energy cost, ditching the car and rush-hour commute may be the hallmark of the 21st Century job.

The idea of mass collaboration has become so popular; it is making its way to print media’s familiar haunt – the daily newspaper. An article entitled, How do you feel about this headline, appearing in The Toronto Star in July 2008, listed a new job posting: Citizen Journalist. This role, explains the article, will be facilitated by ‘a new tool launched by thestar.com that allows users to comment on stories. The goal is to make the news more interactive, more dynamic, more of an open discussion, instead of a static lecture.’

While the Toronto Star has made this collaborative effort a new addition, other publications base their entire being around global collaborative efforts. The best example of this is the photography magazine JPG. Its most recent issue, entitled Human Impact, and On the Go, advertises on the cover that ‘you can submit photos, write articles, and vote at jpgmag.com.’ The contents of the magazine – submitted by members who register for a free account on the internet - cover a breadth of humanity in photographs from across the globe. This type of effort spells out the appeal of mass collaboration: in one publication, there exists a number of different regional images from around the globe. Each contributor occupies a space on the magazine’s main website, which facilitates the high degree of sharing.

To inspire – and doubtless, expand its readership – the back of the magazine outlines the different areas of its content, and describes how new members can contribute. For example, the categories are: On the job; where you can interview and shoot someone with a cool job; WTF (you understand), where photographers can submit their weirdest photos – with descriptions; Where I’m At, which is dedicated to show and tell pieces about a contributors town, city or neighbourhood; and lastly, Nice to Meet You, where one can shoot and describe someone interesting. Each category is advertised on a cut-out card, with the intention of being stowed in a camera bag, and comes with bullet-point ideas to get you started. With over 489,179 submissions to jpgmag.com by 142, 568 members, and 11,594 submissions to issue 16 by 6,970 members, this collaborative take is quickly gaining momentum.

Just as the democratic process made us feel – at least a little more – comfortable with the political process, so to can mass collaboration make us feel comfortable with the life process. The more and more individuals feel connected to a story, event, process, or disaster as the case may be, the more and more people will choose to care. If you polled a majority of Canadians about how effective they think their vote is, I’m willing to bet all the money in my pockets and all the money in your pockets, that a majority feel their vote will not matter. Even though politicians use the internet to make themselves available for comments by their constituents, the use of the Internet in this way is, considering history, relatively new and its effectiveness in rallying politically active people has yet to be tested over a long enough period of time. This is to say nothing of how reluctant older crowds are to approach a computer, and as well, the most politically apathetic generation are young people who are coming-of-age in generation I.

So what is the point? Mass collaboration is fast becoming the medium of communications and business networking; it is also making its way into the literary world. For example, as an endnote, authors Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams attached to their book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, a website address where readers can involve themselves in the editing process of their work, and as well, can offer refinements to the arguments they make. Put another way; novels traditionally promote one way of looking at something, or to borrow the words of the Citizen Journalist job posting, are static lectures that offer little chance for collaborating with its creativity. In this sense, novels promote a method of learning that runs counter to the 21st Century experience.

Another standpoint, offered by Nicholas Carr in his article Is Google Making Us Stupid? written for the Atlantic, promotes that heavy internet usage is reprogramming the human brain in ways that deter our ability to read long works. He explains that ‘media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.’ The affect he says is the ‘mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.’ How does the Net affect mediums? Carr writes that ‘when the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is recreated in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed.’

So perhaps it goes without saying that the Internet’s centrality in the role of communications has altered the traditional image of the novel. The Internet is now pregnant with the latest weapon against the novel: the eBook. After all, why would you spend $32.99 on a hard cover novel, when you can download it for $5-10 at Project Guttenberg’s site for example?

Appearing on Rabble.ca, Wayne MacPhail’s article Living in the future with the book of books, describes the Sony Reader Digital Book. About the thickness of an iPod, and the appearance of a Moleskin notebook, MacPhail says that it ‘can store up to 160 average-length books. That means the Reader Digital Book is not really a book at all, it’s an uberbook. It can call up for display any of the thousands upon thousands of pages in its memory. You can bookmark a page, flip to a specific page and select books from your library with a simple menu.’ Its all-in-one nature will fit nicely into the modern image of convenience: maybe the Sony Digital Reader Book will be sold in the electronics department of your local grocery store!

Just as technology is moving literature away from traditional mediums, it is also popularizing new literary movements. In 1984, American poet Marc Smith created what he called Poetry Slam. He noted that ‘the very word poetry repels people. Why is that? Because of what schools have done to it. The slam gives it back to the people…we need people to talk poetry to each other. That’s how we communicate our values, our hearts, the things that we’ve learned that make us who we are.’

Smith’s Poetry Slam helped popularize the spoken word scene created by dynamic performers such as Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. In a sense, poetry slam was marinated in the early 1980s with the free-flow of jazz, and the attitude of hip-hop. As well, as dissents and political activists began to advertise their messages through these mediums, spoken word and poetry slam inspired new artists, such as Saul Williams, to pick up their pens.

However, while bringing a new level of cool to poetry, slam and spoken word carries literature further away from the archaic novel. Inasmuch as slam expressed the values that are important to communicate, it also embraced the evolution in communication’s mediums. This movement has grown and continues to grow because of how accessible and easy to procure, recording technology has become. One explanation for this is the essence of poetry slam is a freestyle quality that cannot be pinned down on a page. Instead, recorders are used to capture the evolving flow and raw emotions of slam. The trouble this leads to the novel is that recording software has long-since been made available to the everyday person. Nowadays it is easy to burn discs, or to create your own studio album with a recording devise.

While technology and science are making transitions in the name of energy efficiency, however, the influence of the Green Movement can also be seen as having negative impacts on the novel. We have seen how the Internet has turned reader’s attention from the blank page, to the web page; however changing environmental practices are also playing their part to facilitate this shift.

Since improvements were made to the technology of recycling, reduce, reuse, recycle has become a well-known slogan. Over the years, the idea of recycling has spawned new trends for the design and production of goods utilizing recycled materials. Many people can recall seeing compact disc jackets boast of being made from 100% recycled material. Using paper plates at the cottage used to be considered a crime, but has been vindicated due to the fact that most are made of recycled materials, and can be recycled themselves after usage.

Recycling has long been a function most offices partake in as well. More likely than not, one can recall seeing ‘think before you print’ signs above network printing stations, which institutionalizes the importance of reducing the amount of paper being wasted. The fact that more and more offices are placing emphasis on economical use of paper, makes the internet more important and the novel seem out of touch. Of course, one cannot ignore the fact that publishers also use recycled material for their novels, however, with the prominence the Internet has in the 21^st Century, getting rid of the novel out right may not be far off.