DIGITAL LITERATURE

In the second half of the twentieth century, some scientific insights and

technological innovations have particularly contributed to shape the sense of a new

historical age. They include: nuclear technology, journeys to the moon and the mars,

television, global communications networks, the discovery of DNA, in vitro

fertilization, the cloning of animals, the human genome project, and digital

technology from the personal computer to the World Wide Web. The intensive

growth of technoscientific innovations in the decades following World War II opened

up new fields whose impacts have been perceived, experienced and vigorously

discussed among the public: computer technology and biotechnology are two of the

salient areas that have given rise to utopian hopes as well as to apocalyptic figures.

This has most strikingly created the sense of an epochal break. The widespread

resistance to nuclear technology and the emergence of environmentalism as a

perceptible, social and political force point to a different dimension of technoscientific

postmodernism.

Computer technology is clearly associated with the idea of technological

progress. It has radically transformed the daily life of a large part of the population in

industrialized societies. When computers were first invented, they found their primary

uses in military and highly specialized scientific purposes and, by late 1950s, they

came to be used in business. Their control by a small group of highly trained

specialists inspired popular fears about scenarios of totalitarian surveillance and

control, through the power of technocratic elite or through the possibility of

a “reign of machines” in which computers’ intelligence would outpace that of humans

and allow them to dominate their creators. More mundanely, the use of computers in

the industrial sector and later in the service sector fuelled worries whether they would

destroy employment for humans. In subsequent decades, it turned out that the

computers were destined to become smaller rather than larger, as their processing

power increased; they could be made to perform a wide variety of tasks other than

mathematical calculations. The futurologists and science-fiction writers foresaw how

common a device the computer would become in the 1980’s. Even when the

possibility of building “personal computer” emerged in the 1970s, some computer

designers doubted whether the general public outside a small circle of experts would

have any interest in acquiring such devices.

The enthusiasm with which millions of non-experts adopted the personal

computer once it became available is hard to explain; through its practical uses, it

initially required some familiarity with programming, operating systems, and

hardware. For some new users, the computer remained little more than an extremely

advanced form of typewriter for years before they discovered it’s more sophisticated

and wide –ranging applications. For many, the computer was an icon of progress,

autonomy, and individual empowerment. This is opposite to their perception of

electronic mammoths that had been owned by the government, the military and big

corporations. The idea that one could personally own such a piece of futuristic

technology promises access to a different world. Businesses, initially overtaken by the

fast pace of innovation in digital technology, also began to adopt computers in large

numbers to carry out a wide range of tasks from record-keeping and accounting to

inventory control, production, and advertising. In a mere two decades, the computer
turned from a specialized research tool to a universal machine that can be adapted to

the most varied uses, from number-crunching all the way to creative experimentation

with sounds and images.

What contributed crucially to the success of the computer in professional as

well as private contexts is the merging of information with communications

technologies. The computer came to function not only as a sophisticated device for

storing and managing varied types of information efficiently but also as an innovative

means of communication. Electronic mail and bulletin boards brought about a first

shift in communicative habits, allowing communities of geographically far-removed

individuals and institutions with shared interests to interact without the intermediary

of the printed word or the telephone. In the 1990s, the emergence of the Internet from

earlier networks of computers that had been dedicated to specific military and

academic purposes brought about an explosion in electronic communications. More

than individual computers or even electronic mail, the Internet helped to create a

sense that the computer was not so much a tool as an entirely new medium, an

alternative environment or space in which many daily activities would take place in

the future. Transcending the modernist association of technology with machines, the

networked, communicating computer promised access to a virtual space in which an

abundance of information sources, commercial opportunities, and places for social

encounter awaited the user. Reinforced by the “cyberpunk” images popular in the

1980s, virtual space has become a far richer and more interesting environment than

real space. The globally networked computer as a “postmodern” technology seemed

to open the door to a realm beyond the physical limitations of modernist machines.
 The rise of digital technology was accompanied by utopian hopes for the

transformation of social structures. It was claimed that marginalized individuals and

communities would be empowered by easier and cheaper access of political processes

and that it would transform education and allow new types of social communities to

emerge. The figure of the cyborg, originally a physical amalgam of human and

machine, simultaneously emerged as a tantalizing metaphor that signaled potential

new relationships between body and mind, and the possibility of endlessly

transformable identities. Some of these hopes have been at least partially realized.

While others continue to exist as aspirations for the future, many types of information

have become more easily accessible, for those who can use computers, and new

groups have been formed through email and the World Wide Web.

While digital technology has not led to the wholesale social revolution that

early enthusiasts anticipated, it has contributed to a transformation that is often

referred to as paradigmatically postmodern: the transition of societies, not only in the

West but also in other parts of the world, from goods-based to service-based

economies. This transition implies that a large part of what is produced, sold, and

bought in a particular services provides the consumer with specific sorts of

information. Indeed, it is often argued that information is the most important

commodity in postmodern society in that it is the production of and access to

knowledge, rather than material goods, that ultimately shape social and economic

structures. This “postindustrial economy” or “knowledge economy” is referred to as

the “new economy” in Europe and in the United States in the 1990s. It is an economy

that does not obey the same principles as do the economies that rely principally on the

production and distribution of material goods. The idea that such economies would
lead to sustained rates of high growth, low inflation, the absence of “up-and-down”

business cycles, and the transfer of business from physically rooted to Internet-based

companies, seem to be doubtful when many “dot.coms” failed and economies across

the globe returned to low growth at the turn of the millennium. It remains to be seen

whether the functioning of the “new economy” differs fundamentally from the old

one. It is clear that services have an unprecedented prominence in its functioning, and

that access to information functions as a pivotal commodity. It is capable of this due

to digital technology, one of the most central media for the postmodern “information

society.”

In this context, e-literature’s place in serious literary study can be seen in its

broad acquaintance with fields like Culture Studies, New Media Studies,

deconstruction and postmodernism. Just as the history of print literature is deeply

bound up with the evolution of book technology consistently built on wave after wave

of technical innovations, so the history of electronic literature is entwined with the

evolution of digital computers as they shrank from the room-sized IBM 1401 machine

to the networked machine, thousands of times more powerful and able to access

massive amounts of information from around the globe. By electronic literature, we

mean a literature that is “digital born.” This includes genres as varied as hypertext

fiction, interactive fiction, poetry generators, automatic stories, conversational

programmes. A distinct feature of e-literature is the requirement of a properly

executed code in order for the work to be accessible. E-literature can be understood as

a mediator between human beings and the computers. As the World Wide Web has

developed, new authoring programmes and methods of dissemination are available.

The electronic literature is amazingly richly diverse, spanning all the genres
associated with print literature and adding some genres unique to networked and

programmable media. Readers having a little familiarity with the field will probably

identify it initially with hypertext fiction characterized by linking structures like

Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl, written in Storyspace.

The limitations of Storyspace as a Web authoring programme are

significant.With the movement to the Web, the nature of electronic literature has

changed. Whereas early works tended to be blocks of text traditionally called lexia

with limited graphics, animation, colours and sound, later works make much fuller

use of the multi-modal capabilities of the Web. While the hypertext link is considered

the distinguishing feature of the earlier works, later works use a wide variety of

navigation schemes and interface metaphors that tend to de-emphasize the link as

such.

As the varieties of electronic literature have expanded, hypertext fictions are

mutated into a range of hybrid forms, including narratives that emerge from a

collection of data repositories. To describe these, David Ciccoricco introduces the

useful term "network fiction," defining it as digital fiction that makes use of hypertext

technology in order to create emergent and recombinatory narratives.

Then comes the Interactive fiction (IF) which differs from the hypertext

fictions, in having stronger game elements. The demarcation between electronic

literature and computer games is far from clear; many games have narrative

components, while many works of electronic literature have game elements.

Alternating game play with novelistic components, interactive fictions expand the
repertoire of the literary through a variety of techniques, including visual displays,

graphics, animations, and clever modifications of traditional literary devices.

The next move is to go from imaging three dimensions interactively on the

screen to immersion in actual three-dimensional spaces. As computers have moved

out of the desktop and into the environment, other varieties of electronic literature

have emerged. Whereas in the 1990's email novels were popular, the last decade saw

the rise of forms depended on mobile technologies: from short fiction delivered

serially over cell phones to location-specific narratives keyed to GPS technologies,

often called locative narratives. In Janet Cardiff's The Missing Voice (Case Study B),

for example, the user hears a CD played on a Walkman keyed to locations in

London's inner city, tracing a route that takes about forty-five minutes to complete.

The complements to site-specific mobile works foreground the user's ability to

integrate real-world locations with virtual narratives. They are site-specific

installations in which the locale is stationary, such as a CAVE virtual reality

projection room or gallery site. In their specificity and lack of portability such works

are reminiscent of digital art works. But in their emphasis on literary texts and

narrative constructions, they can be considered texts of electronic literature. Like the

boundary between computer games and electronic literature, the demarcation between

digital art and electronic literature is also blurred and shifty. It is a matter of the

critical traditions on the basis of which the works are discussed rather than anything

intrinsic to the works themselves.

 Performed in a three-dimensional space in which the user wears virtual reality

goggles and manipulates a wand, these works enact literature not as a durably

imprinted page but as a full-body experience that includes kinetic, proprioceptive and

dimensional perceptions. The enhanced sensory range that these works address is not

without cost. CAVE equipment, costing more than a million dollars and depending on

an array of powerful networked computers and other equipments, is typically found

only in Research 1 universities and other elite research sites. On account of the high

initial investment, and continuing programming and maintenance costs, it is usually

funded by grants to scientists. Of the few institutions that have this high-tech

resource, even fewer are willing to allocate precious time and computational resources

to creative writers. Literature created for this kind of environment is likely to be

experienced in its full implementation only by a relatively few users.

There are certain issues that are debated today within the literary communities:

whether electronic literature is really literature at all, whether the dissemination

mechanisms of the Internet and World Wide Web, will open publication to everyone:

whether literary quality is possible in digital media; whether electronic literature is

demonstrably inferior to the print canon. It is interesting to enquire into the large-scale

social and cultural changes that accompany the popularity of digital culture, and its

impact on the future of writing. These issues cannot be discussed without first

considering the contexts that give them meaning and significance; it implies a wide-

ranging exploration of what electronic literature is, how it overlaps with and diverges

from print literature, what signifying strategies characterize it, and how these

strategies are interpreted by users as they go in search of meaning. In brief, one

cannot answer these questions unless one has first thoroughly explored and
understood the specificities of digital media. To see electronic literature only through

the lens of print is, in a significant sense, not to see it at all. E literature is, in a sense,

literature in a digital format. It combines the literariness and techniques of print

literature with the protean format and hermeneutic strategies of digital texts.

The study is an analysis of the character and range of digital (re)mediation of

e-literary texts in the context of the power structures enforced through digital

protocols. It is a Foucauldian perspective of the epistemology of digitalized literary

texts. Cyberspace is a site where appropriation and reappropriation of e-texts is

possible in their context and form. The study visualizes how the digital format of the

e-texts influences the sensibility of the audience and consequently controls the

evaluation of the texts.

The first chapter provides the framework within which the study is conducted.

It is an inquiry into the field of electronic literature which partakes both partaking the

literary tradition and the textual transformations brought out by its new format. The

protean format of e-literature necessitates a redefinition of literature and its values.

The second chapter explores the economics of the e-texts and hypertexts. The

information gathered from the media market is used to test the viability of hypertext

theory. The chapter draws attention to the important continuities between print

literature and electronic literature, as well as enumerates their similarities and

differences. It gives solid reasons for examining the challenges involved in making

electronic content or making content electronic. This chapter presents an appreciation

of the real strengths and limitations of the digital medium, particularly the extent to
which electronic texts are malleable and fungible. It provides a means to appreciate

the relationship between author, context, form, design and programming. Electronic

literature is digitalized in various genres like electronic novel, protean fiction,

hypertext fiction and interactive fiction.

The third chapter is a meticulous analysis of the most popular and best known

genre of electronic literature: the hypertext fiction. It distinguishes itself by its many

links between blocks of text known as lexias. This chapter discusses Shelley

Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, one of the best and most popular examples of the genre.

This hypertext fiction is written in Storyspace, the hypertext authoring programme

first created by Michael Joyce, Jay David Bolter, and John B. Smith and then licensed

to Mark Bernstein of Eastgate Systems, who improved, extended, and maintained it.

This software is so important, especially to the early development of the field, that the

works created in it have come to be known as the Storyspace School. Intended as

stand-alone objects, Storyspace works are usually distributed as CDs (earlier as disks)

for Macintosh or PC platforms and, more recently, in cross-platform versions. Along

with Macintosh's Hypercard, it was the programme of choice for many major writers

of electronic literature in late 1980's and 1990's.

Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl is not simply a new recreation of

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in hypertext format. It tries to develop some of the

implications in the original text from the paradigms of contemporary science and

criticism. This analysis is an attempt to reveal the ways in which these paradigms,

characterized by their emphasis on fragmentariness, are made to interact dialogically

with Shelley’s novel in order to produce a postmodern version. Apart from exploring
the filial connections that one may expect in any rewriting exercise, this work focuses

on the way Jackson questions the concepts of authorship, originality and creativity,

and related issues such as intertextuality and assemblage. These are indices of the

theoretical concerns underlying Jackson’s text. His narrative strategy follows,

rewrites Shelley’s “Hideous Progeny” and invites us to re–read it.

The final chapter reread the metamorphosed text in the new medium, on

interactive fiction, which includes what has been called the “text game” or “text

adventure.” Specifically, the interactive fiction is constituted of the computer

programmes that displays text, accepts textual responses, and then redisplays

additional text in reaction to what has been typed. The exchange between the user and

the computer continues until the person interacting terminates the programme or

reaches the conclusion.

The initial portion of the chapter introduces the form in meticulous details,

discussing its significance in electronic literature scholarship and explaining the

elements of its form from the perspective of narratology. The chapter outlines the

development of interactive fiction, from its oldest form, the riddle. The games

developed at universities in reaction to Adventure, and the most widely distributed

and influential narrative fiction work, Zork. They are milestones in the development

of narrative fiction. The beginning of commercial interactive fiction for the personal

computer is a recent phenomenon. The study is limited to two genres of e-fiction in

the context of the limited frame of the dissertation.

 The study is not precisely an attempt at a survey, or a comprehensive history

of e-literature. It is intended as an approach, leading the audience to a new and

enriching experience of e-literature. This study seeks to provide a way into the digital

labyrinths to explore the new wonder called e-literature. The study wants to evaluate

the impact of e-novels on the sensibility of the surfers: how the epistemological

structure of the e-novels is synchronized with the power structures that operate in the

cyberspace. The analogues of episteme and power superimpose constructing text,

subjectivity, identical meaning in the interstices of the digital space.