Digital is digitalis?
Well, maybe not digital taken literally, but I couldn’t think of a death-related pun for technological advancements.
At any rate, the past few years have seen huge advances in technology, specifically in literature and the way we consume stories. It’s ideological Darwinism, maybe. Tales were orally passed from generation to generation, then scribbled with sharpened sticks and powered root, then pressed onto paper… You know what I’m getting at.
Purists argue that the internet ruined literature, then it was Kindle, then whatever comes next. I can’t say I disagree, though I can’t agree either. Like someone said on HTML GIANT (a great site that spawns all sorts of interesting conversations; you should read it consistently) when they began to bind books, did the oldheads argue that scrolls were so much more authentic?
More than 75% of my reading is now done online. I have issues with magazines and publishing houses that don’t take online submissions. If I had an iPhone, I’d subscribe to TripleQuick, a featherPROOF app that sends 333 word stories to your phone. Technology has made everything way more accessible, and, for people like us who exist on the fringe, possible to get our stories read.
I’m not debating that literature and storytelling have changed. What I want to know is how has it changed writing? Most of my stories crawl in the darkness, scurrying from the noir shadow to the blackened alley of crime and horror, occasionally lingering is the jaundiced light cast by capital-L Literature. All of them take place in the present era (no GANGS OF NEW YORK stuff, I mean.) The problem I come across, though, is technology. What self-respecting low-life texts ‘$50,000 or the girl gets it’? All of my characters use phone booths. No one has a cell-phone. Hell, usually they don’t even have a car. Occasionally an answering machine will pop up.
How do you reconcile the advances of technology with the ethos of your work? Does it change anything? Help? Hurt? Indifferent either way?
Damn good questions. I, too, have characters that use phone booths, though it has been years since I’ve used one. Honestly, it’s about time my characters embrace the cell phone. I genuinely have no good reason, other than plot, to not use one.
“…when they began to bind books, did the oldheads argue that scrolls were so much more authentic?”
In a sense, yes–until the printing press the Church had a monopoly on mass-market publishing, using armies of monks and priests to crank out all kinds of manuscripts–human Xerox machines. The Gutenberg Bible was basically a proof of concept/bribe/John Henry kind of thing, that the technology was not heretical and could be employed by the church more effectively than slave labor. The analog today is that bricks-and-mortar publishing, the publishing church of our day, is completely outdated and will contract significantly, even as the rate of books sales increases.
That’s not to say big publishers will fail–their business is still too profitable to fail. But the big lie they’re telling people through the media is that “people don’t read fiction any more.” Fiction has never been bigger or more popular; it’s just that now people like myself (and almost everybody I know are reading other indie/self-pubbed/small press titles exclusively, or on a 10:1, 20:1 ratio. Several years ago I heard a statistic that big publishers only account for 40% of book sales; if that were true then, I’d say it’s a lot less than that now.
Oh, meant to say–great piece!
Your character can still use a phone booth, probably as a place to take a leak. But you rarely see phone booths in the states any more.
So what became of those phone companies now that wire lines are going the way of buggy whips? Well, they’re selling cellular service now. Everything evolves and outdated industries will evolve too, whether with old players that get real, or new players.
I got a Nook for x-mas and am having a blast with it.
Great piece. Years ago, a reviewer of ‘The X-Files’ made the point that many of their stories couldn’t have been told the way they were before the advent of cell phones. Obvious in retrospect, but for whatever reason that thought’s stayed with me. I don’t mind throwing a cell or laptop or Google map into some dustbowl noir. Whatever’s needed and seems to fit.