Blogging, as a new way of writing through technology, has changed the mentality of many when it comes to being intellectually unique. It not only helps many communicate among friends and family, but also communicates our sense of literature. Writing brings out what may be our distinctive sense of love of writing in our own way even though it may be public. Blogging has showed many that there is a reason to love writing and to not be afraid of it.
N. Katherine Hayles believes that there is great achievement in writing. She believes that writing has transformed to an electronic text that can be read in many different possible ways. Essays that are electronically “written” are still considered to be “informative, meditative, and/or journalistic (Electronic Literature Collection Volume One).” Facebook and WordPress.com are examples of this. They show that not only do people connect socially, but that many can collectively show interest in writing in their own unique style. It also lets many people write in any form they want and to become intellectual through reading and writing in their own way. Hayles says that:
“At this time in the early 1980s, modular programming was a new idea, and she thought it had much in common with the composition techniques she used in her writing classes. Paragraphs were like modules; transitions were like comments and annotations; structure and organization were like flowcharts (p.35).”
Hayles believes that writing in your own unique way helps one to create a new kind of authentic way of writing. Using the phrase “modular programming” suggests that there is a movement arising from the world of writing. People are creating and inventing something new everyday that is allowing everyone to read material that is less private and more out in the open for the world to see. This helps those become more creative through the world of technology allowing the writing to be more graphic and more artistic through the eyes of the writer. This enables the reader to be more in-depth in the reading and possibly help him/her to understand it better. Blogging helps create a new type of research by looking material up. It allows the reader to be more conscious and concentrate more on the thesis with different graphics and a new persona in the writing. The reader becomes more attuned into the reading by having the imagination work the story line. Instead of having to figure things out and flip through pages all one would have to do is scroll up and down to find the answer.
Another perspective that Hayles would believe to be true is that reading is not private anymore. It is out in the open and for everyone to see. It is more public and allows the reader to look more in detail with the words that the author of the blog bestowed for everyone to see. Reading a blog helps everyone communicate with a story and possibly the author as well. This allows people to be more intellectual through reading. It also broadens the horizons of every individual with the help of others. Birkerts thinks that reading in private is more appropriate than out in the public. He suggests that there is no reason for blogging or any electronic source, for that matter, to help an individual with reading. Reading privately helps one to become more intellectual and to help them embrace the true nature of the story. Reading, to him, should not be a way to communicate, but to bring the story to life in the mind without using graphics or any source of electronic dialect. To him, reading is a way to bring someone relief from the outside world.
To reinforce his ideas, Sven Birkerts says:
“I would draw the line, imprecisely, somewhere in the 1950s. That was when television worked its way into the fabric of American life, when he grew accustomed to the idea of parallel realities-one that we lived in, the other that we stepped into whenever we wanted a break from our living. People born after the mid-1950s are the carriers of the new; they make up the force that will push us out of our already-fading rural/small-town/urban understanding of social organization. The momentum of change has already made those designations all but meaningless. Any many think it is a good thing (p. 214-215).”
Birkerts, here, believes that the new millennium, full of new innovations for writing, is a disgrace to society. He thinks that it is making society stupid and not allowing them to make reading a more private time. He does not prefer electronic text to a paperback source also. He believes that an electronic source is taking away the true story and that there is no reason for an upgrade in society. With that said, Birkerts would agree that an electronic source is a more detrimental way of being more intellectual then just picking up a book or magazine that allows a more in-depth way of reading. Society has changed and Birkerts does not agree with it.
Clearly, it is apparent that blogging goes hand-in-hand with the way people communicate now-a-days in an intellectual way. With that in mind, people can use electronic devices to portray their own sense of writing in an exceptional style of literature no matter who appreciates it or not. For me, Facebook and WordPress help me to not be afraid of the style of writing I want others to read and comment on. Technology, during this day in age, has become the new age of literature and many people will always have views on this factor. With that in mind, Hayles suggests that technology has helped many embrace their literal side unlike Birkerts.
Works Cited
“Contents by Keyword.” Electronic Literature Collection Volume One. N.p., n.d.
Web. 19 Apr 2010.<http://collection.eliterature.org/1/aux/keywords.html>.
Birkerts, Sven. The Gutenberg Elegies. New York: Faber & Faber, Inc., 1994.
214-215. Print.
Hayles, N. Katherine. Writing Machines. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2002. 35.
