Literature and digital culture

Question 1

Literature and digital culture
Computer generated (-assisted) literature (CGL)

Answer 1

• Generated through (or imitating) computer programming.
• “Random” textuality.
  
  • Automatism
  • Machine composition
• Undercuts traditional conception of authorship.
  
  • Shifts to programming /software design

Alison Knowles “House of Dust”
Raymond Queneau “Cent mille milliards de poèmes”
George Perec “The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise”
Nick Monfort “World Clock”
Michelle Fullwood “Twide and Twejudice”
Greg Borensteins “Generated Detective”

Question 2

Literature and digital culture
Computer-based literature (CBL)

Answer 2

• Uses or imitates digital capabilities.
• Hypertext literature.
  
  • hypertext architecture
• Reading more “active” than conventional reading-
  
  • readers choose reading paths.
  • personal, aleatory, often unrepeatable.
• Text lacks linearity or traditional plot

Michael Joyce “An Afternoon, A Story”
Shelley Jackson “Patchwork Girl”

Question 3

Literature and digital culture
Literature about the digitized environment (LADE)

Answer 3

• Conventional literature (print-based) about an environemnt modified by digital culture.
• Usually part of science fiction.

Question 4

Literature and digital culture
Cyberpunk fiction
Antecedents

Answer 4

• Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke, William Burroughs
• Societies of control and underground rebellion against them.
• Bodies: supplemented/modified by machines and drugs.

Question 5

Literature and digital culture
Cyberpunk fiction
Influences

Answer 5

“Hard-boiled” crime fiction
- Male loner protagonists.
- Set in low depths of society (or confluence of “high” and “low” crime)
- Precise, incisive, carefully crafted style.

Question 6

Literature and digital culture
Cyberpunk fiction
Characteristics (9)

Answer 6

• Dystopian science fiction
• Urban settings: decaying, post-industrial cities ridden with crime and populated by marginal subcultures
• Societies controlled by economic interests and crime sindicates.
• No governments or control mechanisms.
• No social cohesion.
• Protagonists: hackers who have fallen in disgrace with some criminal association or multinational.
• Technologically modified bodies.
• Fascination with social decay + criticism of some contemporary policies (de-regulation; indirect private government)
• Vision of the present in fast-forward
  
  • High technology.
  • Extreme social polarization.
  • Lack of civic responsibility or sense of community.

Question 7

Literature and digital culture
Cyberpunk fiction
Authors

Answer 7

William Gibson “Neuromancer”
Pat Cadigan “Synners”, “Mindplayers”
Bruce Sterling “Heavy Weather”, “Islands in the Net”

Question 8

Literature and digital culture
AI literature

Answer 8

NOT A FORMAL SUBGENRE, BUT A TOPIC.

• Protagonists:
  
  • Autonomous or semi-autonomous software objects.
  • Autonomous or semi-autonomous programs of increasing complexity and sophistication.
• About limits of the human and ethical relationships with nonhuman forms.

ANTECEDENTS : literature on robots and robotics
- Samuel Butler “Erewhon”
- Karel Capec “R.U.R.”
- Isaac Asimov “Robot” series
- Philip K. Dick “Do Androis Dream of Electric Sheep?”
- Brian Aldiss “Supertoys Last All Summer Long”

AUTHORS
- Richard Powers “Galatea 2.2”
- Ted Chiang “The Life Cycle of Software Objects”
- Kazuo Ishiguro “Klara and the Sun”
- Naomi Kritzer
“Cat Pictures, Please”
“Catfishing on CatNet”
“Chaos on CatNet”
“Lyberty’s Daughter”