Hypercompendia

From Scott  Rettberg over at Grand Text Auto, his paper on "Communitizing Electronic Literature" that he’s prepared for the ELO conference in Vancouver that’s happenin’ right now.

I’ve only gotten a small part of the way through it–due to lack of time and not its content–and while I find myself nodding in agreement to much of it, learning even more, there are some issues I’d likely argue though I’d like to finish reading it before I do so.  So why don’t I? Because I wanted to spread the word rather than have it be old news by the time I’m done.

Even as a newcomer to digital media and hypertext and such, I find it surprising that the same old fight to get recognition is still going on.  Usually, something either makes it big time or fades into the past like a hula hoop.  If it’s still an active idea–and it is certainly so–then to me, the problem is not the medium but perhaps the marketing.

I well understand the resistance to a new form of reading–Lord knows how many of my once dear friends now avoid me because of my insistence that they read my latest venture, or better, someone else’s–but there are a number of walls here that need taking down.  To me, that’s the first step in marketing: know thine enemy. (It’s also the first step in gardening, particularly when it comes to weeds and bugs and four-footed sneaking creatures of the night)  Then you can prepare for the attack.

The problems, oversimplified, are 1) the older audience that clings to the comfort and inky smell of paper books, and 2) the younger folks who prefer the visual graphics of gaming to the hieroglyphics of text. Goodness knows, the new age brings folks more into reading and writing than ever with its technology that has it all over the written pen pal letter or thank-you note, but this: "r u @ home?" will never lead one into digging further into Faulkner or Joyce. 

And maybe there is yet another problem: the tendency to please the masses rather than try to educate them. It all comes down to money on that argument.  So the medium changes rather than the mind.

But now is the perfect time to promote digital media of all sorts.  Amazon was smart enough to take advantage of the times with Kindle.  I remember a time where you didn’t go to the beach without a book.  You always packed several for any trips.  I recall getting hollered at by my mother for reading in the car.  In the dark sometimes, waiting for the flash of headlights on a twenty-minute ride from shopping in New Haven. 

So what do we do?  Well, short of burning books to keep them out of the hands of one generation and adding in the pictures we evidently took out too soon from the books between "See Spot Run" and "The Hardy Boys," I guess we have to come up with a marketing plan.