The Digital Writer |
The Digital Writer became a bold elitist once he understood that he could never compete against pro wrestling, porn, or eighteen-year old rockers for the hearts and minds of the people. This did not create sadness but, rather, elation as he felt released from the bondage of the market system.
Not that there weren't problems.
Principles of Construction
The Digital Writer had gone the long way around; putting together a writing career by meticulously building modules. The first building block was extensive reading. The second building block was developing seed projects in writing. In his readings, the Digital Writer became convinced that the key to anything good and valuable was "growth and development." The next building block was character that permitted him to grow and develop and protect his ambitions against all the toxins human nature was capable of slinging at one. The fourth building block was writing for a magazine that had deadlines, demanded interview and research skills, and gave the Digital Writer the confidence that he could finish any task he set his mind to. The fifth building block was his decision to publish his own material through desktop publishing and, in the process, study elements of small business. When he jumped onto the Net in the mid-90's, everything shifted as he added some very crucial elements. The first was the building of effective pages that would bring some traffic. Secondly, there was the building of a practice that would allow him to interact with the new publishing medium. Finally, he constructed columns, virtual spaces, e-books, and newsletters to contain his first published efforts.
So, at last he could say, "There is much more to a web site than how much money it can bring in." One of the most important things to remember is that a web site is always in front of the creator of it. It's a structure that will evolve just as any other artful object. It's not on the drawing board but in a real space, as real as a dream, there, hovering somewhere and an object to be worked on, through the intent and interest of the author.
One part of the site can be the ever-transient present, another part of the site can be reflection, meditation, or, even, speculation about the future. Another part of the site can be discourse on constructive principles, and so on.
As he observed the landscape he noticed many objects in the background that he needed to take up on their own terms. The littered objects were, after all, power of a sort and competed with what little power he possessed. Everything could be known about the object. The interests who put it there could be known. It was indelibly etched on millions of minds as they passed it day after day. That was an obvious fact. He wanted to produce objects that could not be known; whose energy was a mystery even to the person who made it.
The technologist and the scientist were the doppelganger for the writer. Their objects were valued and esteemed or, even more interestingly, feared. They were so feared that the creators of these objects were beginning to view themselves as outsiders, like 19th century artistic aesthetes.
The only trustworthy writers and, people for that matter, are devoted to what they do and don't care what others think. Good poets and entrepreneur's are that way. The Digital Writer was always formulating an idea of "what a writer is." In his youth there were two dominant models. One was the Writer as Activist whose sole purpose was to change the world or lead people to consider a radical new world. And the other was Writer as Outsider, forever condemned to walk outside the walls of the castle and report on his disgust.
These were attractive but didn't hit home with him as true models for the times. The best model was provided by computer nerds who dreamed up the personal computer, nurtured and protected it, and then pushed it out into the market with no guarantee of success. The entrepreneur model was the best way to fend off the horrendous morale problems writers confront.
That model carried him through some very harsh times.
To be frank about it, a writer who learned how to live with little and focused fully on his writing would be better off in the affluent society. Pull down the demand side of desire and keep bills at a minimum! If you can do that successfully, you can build a writing life. Of course, you have to plow through a whole thicket of prejudice against that sort of "way of life." Don't discount it.
The new reading tablets coming onto the market are a step in the right direction. As I advocated in Sunoasis several years ago, for a new publishing system to succeed on the Net there has to be a way to differentiate the act of reading from all the other acts on the computer screen. The computer could act as a buffer between the gargantuan Net and the reading screen that organizes material and presents it in excellent fashion for the reader. Some of that is possible now through hyperlinks but it would be better to have "agents" fetch material, download it, organize and arrange it on an independent screen. At that moment you would produce a superior publishing system. It will still take a long time to break old habits but the leap forward comes when the reader is convinced they will get an enhanced experience from reading off a computer-like device.
The personalized newspaper is just around the corner. And the Editor is an endangered species. Kinsley is playing with us but it does point out a central idea that we had from the beginning of the Net. The writer is transformed into an editor and called upon to edit the beast for the benefit of Netizens. The intelligent cut into the vast database of the Net, is the first step towards wisdom in the modern world.
Whether that helps literature or not is a different story. What gives literature a fighting chance is that it can help break habits, change habits, and bring people to new ones. It can, once again, be in the forefront, fighting for the future. Literature's days as a form of protest, are pretty much over. Popular culture is now being devoured by it but it will take them another generation to get fully digested by the nihilistic virus. Literature must move into the area where pop culture is the weakest: Meaning, constructive principles, meditations, thought, knowledge, and bring these qualities to the forefront; to the center.
One great advantage the literary writer has in relation to the Net: He is already practiced at the art of patience. Unlike the businessman, the writer can commit to a five-year plan to get on the beast and make a presence.
One of the great things the Net does is take the writer out of isolation and plunge him into a world of significance that can be bruising and challenging. For the literary writer this is especially true. Without that experience the literary imagination becomes a tepid waif afraid of its own shadow. It becomes boxed in by the political rant of any given time. Loyalty is shifted from the art itself to the professors who hold the key to reputation. The art, under these conditions, fades into oblivion.
Newspapers are worried because the young aren't, apparently, reading them. Their habits are being formed by the computer. We predicted the digital publishing revolution would occur when a generation of habits had been formed in the young. Youth intuits something that is extraordinary. The Net is a self- organizing vastness that allows the person to be both producer and consumer, editor and writer, actor and director. It introduces into the lives of the young creative chaos which favors them and does not favor the structured world around them. This fact may be a more compelling one than the 60's period when youth felt confidence in numbers, in the womb of affluence, and did it's own thing.
Youth will go up the learning curve. It will experience the danger and hardship of chaos and opt out of it for more structure; but structure on its own terms. Whether newspapers are in the mix is a question up in the air. Perhaps the newsletter will replace the newspaper but it's hard to predict.
One change of habit in myself: I read the Net, I scan the daily paper.
And books still have the greatest credibility.
What, after all, is a magazine or newspaper? They are made up of writers, editors, copy editors, photographers, ads, etc. They shouldn't worry about the incursions coming in from the digital side. They should rejoice! The only ones who need to worry are the publishers and investors. They are the one's who are going to try and forestall the inevitable. They may even get so desperate that they pay-off writers, editors, copy editors, and photographers with unheard sums of money. A magazine or newspaper is nothing without talent. And the talent in writing is paid a great deal less than other talents because there is no competing system.
Newspapers and magazines are built on talent. And one of these days talent will migrate to the digital publishing system either just before or just after the migration of capital. And it will be a great day when that happens because nothing will decrease the talent. Talented writers, talented editors, talented copy editors, talented photographers will create the new literary system on the Net and people will wonder when it was any different.
Until that day it will be the literary types who will lead the way. A journalist still has a career path in print. Where's the career path online? There is still decent salaries for journalists in print; along with prizes and accolades. It is the literary type, marginalized by print, who will lead the way, who will try and establish a career path online, and do all kinds of experiments with types of writing, presentation, etc. They will lead the way.
It will be awhile before print and digital confront each other over the future. At this time, it's digital's responsibility to innovate as much as possible to bring into being new ways of transmitting information, entertainment, wisdom, stories, and anything else.
Just when it looks like a lost cause, the wireless systems will be fully operational and any person on the planet will be able to access any piece of information, knowledge, or wisdom while flying down the street on his magic scooter. Or, as he relieves himself against the old, fading brick wall of the once powerful metropolitan daily.
Of course, we can always accomplish that magnificent feat of imagination that puts us at the moment the Gutenburg press first arrived, slapping our foreheads and exclaiming, "Good God! What will they think of next." A prudent, thinking person in the late 1400's would see the new printing press as the beginning of something and would factor in the inevitable transformation of technology; from the hand-press to the fully automated press of today that is a wonder to behold. So, we are at that moment. And when we are at that moment, do we not accelerate the process of change? We know changes will take place, why not now?
David