Technology of Writing

The words I write are controlled by the means in which I write them. 

Nervy with Neon, the main drag was all there was. A placeless place.

Technology both coexists with and subsumes its predecessors. For example, the handwritten poem to the left. Pen and paper has existed for hundreds of years, yet the computer has not replaced it and can, in fact, can incorporate the handwritten text in its original state and use it as a building block of other documents. Although both technologies coexist, they have staked out their own territories. The computer excels at sharing information with thousands of people across the globe while the pen excels at writing that is more personal in nature, more transitory, or in situations that a computer cannon function.

The computer, by utilizing Web technology, takes language into the realm of symbols and pictures. So in effect, what is being displayed is a photo of a written poem rather than the actual words of the poem. (In this image the words are too small to read clearly. Therefore, the computer can also make available a larger version that allows the text of the poem to be read. As George Landow points out, pen and paper continue to work alongside computer generated word. (Page 65)

The way in which new technology interacts with existing or antiquity technology is unpredictable. Sometimes when a new technology that holds a duplicate position in our culture is invented, the new technology will often subsume the prior technology such as the ball point pen did with the feather and quill: both performed the exact same function yet one is much easier to operate.  While in other situations, new and old technologies exist in harmony with each other: the typewriter did not replace the ball point pen. Each staked out its own territory: the typewriter for formal and authorial texts, the ball point pen for causal and more temporal text.++

Our cultural ideas are often intwined with available technology. Prior to the invention of the printing press, all texts were individually reproduced, each copy was unique and the text changed over time. One copy of a text might contain differing punctuation than another. The cost of reproducing texts made the audience very limited as the average person could not afford to purchase books.  However, with the invention of the printing press it became possible to produce multiple copies of texts that were exactly alike. The text became fixed and it became multiple. The book also became a product that could be bought and sold earning money for both the person who created the words and the person who assembled the book. According to Landow,  our cultural ideas of authorship and originality that evolved with printing press (P. 18)

The idea of authorship, scholarship and originality that evolved with the printing press is questioned by the very existence of this page in cyberspace. The author of this website has included images of artistic work created by other artists.++  For example, the poem  is an artistic expression created by Charles Tomlinson that is now a building block for this website. But capability to meld and juxtapose different texts predates the development of the Internet. The photocopy machine allowed individual users to assemble block of text or lexia based on their own needs and desires. In The Future of the Book, G. Landow notes that any university course reader has juxtaposed various lexia and assembled them into one text--a text that was not created nor envisioned by the authors of the individual lexia, but was in fact created by the Professor.