Computer and Literary Arts

Computers and Literary Arts

Louis Milic

- observed in 1970 that the objective of those who want computers to use language must be “more modest than that of the computer musicians, who have some respectable compositions to their credit, and the producers of computer graphics, whose beautiful arrangements of lines and colors adorn a number of walls in good artistic company.”

In spite of computers’ limitations, they are used more generally in writing than in any of the other arts.

Did writing changed from the days of the typewriter?

The consensus seems to be that a lot has changed but that the changes are under the surface.

Format

Computer texts exist as a long scroll in the computer’s memory. It appears by screenfuls to the author, and until it is printed out, the readiest measure of length is the number of kilobytes it occupies in memory, which can be metaphorically translated into the length of the imaginary scroll.

Form

Computer offers for endless revision. There’s always a time for one more run-through. 

Process

A writer who uses a local area network can communicate actively with others while engaged in the process of writing.

- Writing is a communal process.

A Networked Classroom – stresses the fact that with computers, writing no longer needs to be an isolated activity.

- “discourse community”

When the community begins to collaborate, writing becomes anonymous, which is to say that the author begins to fade away.

Networks classrooms are a classic use of computers technology. Computer novels, for one, are seldom the work of a single author. Same is true with folk ballads. After years of circulating, the work will be a product of several thinkers.

Walter J. Ong – suggests in Orality and Literacy (1982) that computers encourage a return to many of the mind habits of oral literature. As they return to modes of communal art that predates...