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“INTERNET KILLED THE LITERATURE STAR” wots sooo bad bout th@ n E way…LOL?

29 March, 2008

Before I start my rant of the week please go to you tube and type in “Apple Mac ad 1984″.

The ad depicts a similar world to the dystopia presented in George Orwell’s “1984″. In this ad, the focus is on television being “the opiate of the masses” and Apple Macintosh as their saviour. How untrue this depiction is, if anything television and internet support each other. The reality is that literature has been replaced by the internet. I mean haven’t we all been tempted to copy and paste or use internet addresses in bibliography’s when an assignment is due? It seems that some of us find it easier to use the internet rather than the dreaded and complicated world of the LIBRARY

But is this necessarily a bad thing?

At the moment we are witness to a rapid decline of genuine library goers. And I say genuine because most students that attend the library are usually just following the recommended reading texts for their classes at school. Which highlights several problems in the education system, like a lack of REAL education but lets not get into that. We have reached a point where the world moves to quickly for books. I look at my atlas which still claims Yugoslavia is a country and That Thailand is really called Siam. Indeed it seems that our everchanging world requires a form that can be constantly updated, quickly and easily accessed and works to fulfill our needs…THE INTERNET

I turn now to a great article that details the many philosophers that have thought along these lines before me particularly Michel Foucault and his writing “What is an author” (1969) Where he highlights an essay by Roland Barthes called “The death of the author” (1967). In a general sense it is the idea that the writing and the author are seperate and Foucault expands on this by saying that in the 1960’s it is easy to imagine a world where there can be this breakdown of autocratic literature being fed into the mouths of the masses. Foucault demands a more democratic approach to writing and the sharing of information. But, I dont think foucault would be satisfied with the internet, The internet is unreliable as a means of democratisation sometimes a faster computer puts you ahead of the argument than those with slower internet caps. Sometimes the information is uninformed opinion that begins to spread amongs the internet community like a rumour. This is because we use different names or avatars so we no longer fear being judged. Although it can be argued that the internet is a truly democratic form of sharing information, there are still authors on the internet causing it to be an autocratic system. Like what I am doing right now, I write this omnidirectional argument in the hope that others will contribute to my ideas in a forum space that harbours free speech. However, Edublogs.org gives us authors the ability to reject undesired responses so where have the values of free speech, liberty and democracy gone. Well it seems we havent really thought of the internet as a place where these things should take place. Landow believed that the new revolution would be fuelled by the internet but he was wrong. We just don’t yet respect the power of the internet.

aside from this has anyone noticed how many reasonably educated people are starting to think and actually speak in terms of this abbreviated internet language. I remember a girl from school who actually got into the habbit -along with many of her friends- of saying lol rather than actually Laughing Out Loud. Not only is this aiding my perspective of capitalist lifestyle as ultimately dehuminising its just plain sad. To think that one day we may look back on a novel by Beatrix Potter and think gosh that is really old english. what irks me further is the possiblitity that Harry Potter no.34 will actually be in this dreadful language, just imagine it.

Harry awke 1 mrng to find that his room’d been brkn in2, he reach’d over the nite stand for his glasses that’d certainly seen btr dayz. He then turnd to his dear wife Hermione, who age had not been kind 2, her long flowing hair had lost its corn-like color and her face, its radiance. Harry’s false teeth were insrtd the same way he’d done over 1,000 x b4, but this time they felt diffrnt.

But I don’t want to be seen as one sided especially with such a freshly concieved subject for debating, the internet still has its uses. A world without internet would be less entertaining and certainly more autocratic. The books I read for philosophy are interesting, granted, but there all so one sided. I mean, try having an argument with a book its quite a sight. So perhaps we need to all start taking our internet usage quite seriously because it is a dangerous lifestyle if we don’t. And I do not mean start policing it either, it should remain a free domain. In fact, it should be protected from people who use it to monopolise on the free people of the internet, particularly those damn viagra companies. In reguard to books, they should be used as resources for factual information so as to avoid the spread of internet sites with false information. there might even be a person or institution employed to ban comments and websites that use false information. And that institution can also be put under high scrutiny by the internet community. Its about balance and free thought, without it, we are no longer human but a product of the machines we use.

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