At first look at this volume seemed ‘familiar’. A set of tabs, containing startling pictures as the cover photos, was a recognizable pattern.
Once, where we used to find attractive titles of books such as, ‘A Magical Garden’ and ‘The Invisible Man, now we tend to look at the most attractive picture and decide where to start with.
After going through this volume, I have shared below, two examples of my experience. Then there is an overall analysis. In the end, a comparison of e-literature and literature in print is discussed.
MY EXPERIENCE
‘Red Riding hood’. By Donna Leishman
It opened in a small window; filled with eye-catching pictures and colors; sounds in the background and interactive buttons. It is by no means user-friendly. I couldn’t understand what was going on. The focus was more on finding the next place to click on. It was not at all expressive; no use of language, no caption, no narrator, and no commentary. The sounds helped in judging the nature of the scene. It was more like a game, a boring game. Even the sounds were those of certain games. Moreover, it was less selective in the sense that it gave only two options for the story to move on. This two-minute story, took me ten minutes to finish. Duration and speed were problematic throughout.
Inanimate Alice, Episode 1: China_ By Kate Pullinger and babel
It was more interactive. It could keep the user engaged. It was user-friendly, containing descriptions of every scene. It was more like an interactive thriller movie having graphics, sounds, and movies indeed. It left an impression on the mind due to pictures and visuals.
ANALYSIS OF E-LITERATURE
First Impression
The experience with this ‘pseudo-unique’ version of literature, as Raine Koskimaa, called it, was like swallowing the red pill of ‘The Matrix’, entering into a strange digital world, a world under construction, and being thrown into different doors one by one.
This literature is not user-friendly and understandable. Links and connections in all these games/ books were missing, which made it a horrible experience. What Leishman mentioned for ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ that it is going to provide ‘limited forms’, proved to be a case of all this literature.
Familiarity with Games
It was like a game webpage. I have been playing games from the website ‘friv.com’, which looked just like the website of e-literature.
Moreover, there are many apps in the Google Play store, where it is such as movie-like games, which provide plenty of options to move on. It is similar to what I experienced in this literature.
REDEFINING EXISTING GENRES IN CYBERSPACE
Leishman stated, that this kind of literature proves that ‘typographic text’, has got the potential of creating more such complex forms of work. Moreover, it also tried to form ‘interactive fiction’ like ‘Galatea’.
This seemed to me an attempt to prove that machines are not just what humans made them. They have the power to build their programs, engage in mutually intelligible interaction, and come to equal terms with humans. ‘Nio’ is probably an attempt to make digital programs and languages
Work like ‘On Lionel Kearns’ redefines ontological view.
GOALS
The goal of this literature seemed ambiguous. Why would people waste so much time, leaving the words behind and choosing visuals to build literature? Has mac the hine cast some kind of spell over humanity, which is making humans a slave to these nasty creatures? Why is the computer trying to prove that humans are its slaves? Or why human don’t want to be more powerful than their creation? The digital devices turned into active cognizers? Have we turned completely from an individual self to a cyborg self, collaborating with our machines? When was the green signal given to the machines to take over humanity?
This scenario reminds me of the movie ‘Wall-E’, where humans didn't speak with each other. All they had to do was to sit on moving chairs and have talking sessions on tablets. The earth, filled with garbage was saved by a robot Wall-E, in collaboration with another robot Eve. By the end of the movie, Wall-E was able to save the earth and humanity. Moreover, he was able to find his true love, Eve, which he longed for since the beginning of the film, when he saw humans in love, on a song playing on television. Likewise, the film Matrix is another example, in which machines advanced to the point that they conquered their human creators to become the oppressors.
I think this explains the exact goals of the digital world. Providing humans with technologies and a nice filtered world, this mafia is now invading the language and literature system, which is one of the essences of human traditions. Therefore, it might happen shortly, that e-literature will be studied under the theories of hermeneutics.
CONTENT
The content of this literature is a serious threat to humanity. For example, Inanimate Alice and inanimate Alice shows multimedia futures. Richard Powers’ Galatea 2.2, in which artificial intelligence has been trained, to pass an English Master’s exam, begins to question the nature of its existence.
The material appears prophetic; a threat, a menace, or more accurately a mafia of cyborgs (cybernetic organism; part organic being, part machine).
I am mentioning here those people, who, being a part of the digital world, have turned into digital things themselves, robotic. More specifically, these people have turned from human plus to cyborg plus, which has altered their mindsets. It is a direct note to humans, that ‘hey there humans, we are going to take over both worlds’. This is a division within humans that is created by the digital gang.
Thus, it becomes evident that ‘cybernetics has deconstructed the illusion that systems of information can be separated from their surroundings in any meaningful way’.
The producer of this literature, a cyber-influenced pseudo-human mind, took the work of original authors, redefined it, and retold it, in collaboration with cyber tools as catalysts. However, if we search for the authors of this story (let us suppose, Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault) we find that different people rewrote this story several times. This shows that such variation was under process for a long time.
Now, we have reached a point, where this change has become a massive revolution, due to an enormous revolution in a socio-cultural context.
E-LITERATURE VS. LITERATURE IN PRINT
When we read a print, for example, a novel, we get involved in it. When we begin, images start to build in our imagination. Reading for hours, we imagine characters, their getups, and their expressions, taking ourselves into an entirely different world. This is how human creativity nourishes and flourishes. This is how we get to critically think about a given text from multiple perspectives.
E-literature is not for serious learning. It might be useful for preschool kids only. E-literature, I presume, is for robots, because they do not have minds. They can’t create things from their imagination. Thinking is is a human trait. Printed text is a human thing. E-literature is an impassive entity for machines to read and turn more intelligent. There is no way to skim and scan in e-literature. We see what is shown, and think about what is displayed. It is a way of conditioning humans, making them passive under the active media.
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