Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature (1 Viewer)

mjp

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Bruce Sterling wrote this list in Wired about a week ago (I think it should have been Challenges to Contemporary Literature rather than Challenges in Contemporary Literature, but what do I know):

Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature

1. Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is globalizing and polyglot.

2. Vernacular means of everyday communication "” cellphones, social networks, streaming video "” are moving into areas where printed text cannot follow.

3. Intellectual property systems failing.

4. Means of book promotion, distribution and retail destabilized.

5. Ink-on-paper manufacturing is an outmoded, toxic industry with steeply rising costs.

6. Core demographic for printed media is aging faster than the general population. Failure of print and newspapers is disenfranching young apprentice writers.

7. Media conglomerates have poor business model; economically rationalized "culture industry" is actively hostile to vital aspects of humane culture.

8. Long tail balkanizes audiences, disrupts means of canon-building and fragments literary reputation.

9. Digital public-domain transforms traditional literary heritage into a huge, cost-free, portable, searchable database, radically transforming the reader's relationship to belle-lettres.

10. Contemporary literature not confronting issues of general urgency; dominant best-sellers are in former niche genres such as fantasies, romances and teen books.

11. Barriers to publication entry have crashed, enabling huge torrent of subliterary and/or nonliterary textual expression.

12. Algorithms and social media replacing work of editors and publishing houses; network socially-generated texts replacing individually-authored texts.

13. "Convergence culture" obliterating former distinctions between media; books becoming one minor aspect of huge tweet/ blog/ comics/ games / soundtrack/ television / cinema / ancillary-merchandise pro-fan franchises.

14. Unstable computer and cellphone interfaces becoming world's primary means of cultural access. Compositor systems remake media in their own hybrid creole image.

15. Scholars steeped within the disciplines becoming cross-linked jack-of-all-trades virtual intelligentsia.

16. Academic education system suffering severe bubble-inflation.

17. Polarizing civil cold war is harmful to intellectual honesty.

18. The Gothic fate of poor slain Poetry is the specter at this dwindling feast.
 
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6. Core demographic for printed media is aging faster than the general population. Failure of print and newspapers is disenfranching young apprentice writers.

What? Parts of the population are aging faster than other parts - I mean I feel like that sometimes, but... never mind.

18. The Gothic fate of poor slain Poetry is the specter at this dwindling feast.

What?!
 
15. Scholars steeped within the disciplines becoming cross-linked jack-of-all-trades virtual intelligentsia.

Why is it so bad for a scholar to keep up with developments in areas other than his expertise ? Doesn't that provide contrast and depth to his own field ? And it can't water down the brew of his own expertise. He's already steeped !

18. The Gothic fate of poor slain Poetry is the specter at this dwindling feast.

I'm sorry but that's just gay.

These are my only criticisms though. Overall, technology and people's reactions to it do seem to be a challenge. More shallowness and shorter attention spans, etc... But I think there will also always be a thirst for more complex ideas artfully presented.

EDIT : A few of these challenges also apply to the newspaper industry.
 
Yeah, I think a lot of that is bullshit, but there is a kernel of truth in much of it. And these two, for sure, can't be denied:

3. Intellectual property systems failing.
5. Ink-on-paper manufacturing is an outmoded, toxic industry with steeply rising costs.

I'm not sure, but I think number 18 was partially tongue in cheek.
 
Thinking it over, number 18 probably is written in that spirit.

These warnings he gives might just be more of a problem to the generation coming up now. Say, 12 to 18 year-olds, who are used to accessing everything at once and without context or a sense of chronology. But instead of bitching, I just need to make sure my own nephews acquire a taste for authentic writing and learn how to avoid the watered-down shit.
 
Another thing he doesn't take into account is backlash against the digitizing of everything that can be nailed down. It happened in music (companies now tout hand-wired, analog amps and processing gear because people are hunting down vintage second hand gear and the companies see that there's $$$ to be made doing things the old way), and it will happen with the net and other communications in general.

This shit is still very, very new. It will be a long time before we decide how it's going to work over the long run. The printing press didn't change things overnight. For a very long time it existed beside the old technologies, creating chaos, fear and confusion. Kind of like we're going through now.
 
A Hunter S. Thompson quote I got from someone here (thanks!) probably fits well here:

"Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuck-offs and misfits "” a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage."
 
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HST was himself 18 Challenges to Contemporary Literature.

(on the music business) The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side. - Hunter S. Thompson
 
i think that readers (like kindle, etc.) will become pretty second nature, and printed books will continue to exist as well. the newspapers are dying because they are an inefficient method to deliver information - not because print is already or is becoming outmoded. some books will be more conveniently read and stored on a reader, while others - rare books, art books, fine press books, books with non-standard page layouts, etc. - will benefit from being physical books. there are TONS of books i own that i wish i could download to a reader and then donate to goodwill, and there are others that i will always keep. i think there will always be book collectors, though, no matter how far the digital revolution bites into print's viability as a method of delivering information.
 
I have to say I love reading words off of paper. My eyes have suffered greatly from the computer. I spend 10, 12 hrs a day looking at the pixels on the screen.
I now HAVE to use reading glasses. Urggg...
There is a comfort in not having the whrrr of the computer buzzing in my ear. I know the days of the conventional newspaper are fading but I am really going to miss having my morning cup of coffee reading the paper and NOT having to look into a computer screen. That disconnect is very important to me.
And I will continue to express myself using old skool methods such as letterpress. And I will never give up the book.

The kindle is just another way of destroying my eyes.

just my 2 cents
 

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