The novel … as we know it, has come to its end … True freedom from the tyranny of the line is perceived as only really possible now at last with the advent of hypertext, written and read on the computer, where the line in fact does not exist unless one invents and implants it in the text … With its webs of linked lexias, its networks of alternate routes … hypertext presents a radically divergent technology … Hypertext reader and writer are said to become co-learners and co-writers, as it were, fellow-travelers in the mapping and remapping of textual (and visual, kinetic and aural) components, not all of which are provided by what used to be called the author.
Predictor: Coover, Robert
Prediction, in context:In a 1992 article he wrote for The New York Times, “The End of Books,” Robert Coover tells of his fascination with hypertext, a term coined by computer populist Ted Nelson, as Coover says, “to describe the writing done in the nonlinear or nonsequential space made possible by the computer.” Coover writes about his weekly hypertext workshops at Brown University:”The novel … as we know it, has come to its end. Not that those announcing its demise are grieving. For all its passing charm, the traditional novel, which took center stage at the same time that industrial mercantile democracies arose – and which Hegel called ‘the epic of the middle-class world’ – is perceived by its would-be executioners as the virulent carrier of the patriarchal, colonial, canonical, proprietary, hierarchical and authoritarian values of a past that is no longer with us. Much of the novel’s alleged power is embedded in the line, that compulsory author-directed movement from the beginning of a sentence to its period, from the top of the page to the bottom, from the first page to the last … True freedom from the tyranny of the line is perceived as only really possible now at last with the advent of hypertext, written and read on the computer, where the line in fact does not exist unless one invents and implants it in the text … With its webs of linked lexias, its networks of alternate routes … hypertext presents a radically divergent technology, interactive and polyvocal, favoring a plurality of discourses over definitive utterance and freeing the reader from domination by the author. Hypertext reader and writer are said to become co-learners and co-writers, as it were, fellow-travelers in the mapping and remapping of textual (and visual, kinetic and aural) components, not all of which are provided by what used to be called the author.”
Biography:Robert Coover was one of the pioneers of online literature. He has been a teacher of experimental courses in hypertext and multimedia narrative at Brown University. His 1992 essay on hypertext in the New York Times Book Review, “The End of Books,” described and publicized the idea of digital literature. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1992
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Publishing
Name of publication: New York Times
Title, headline, chapter name: The End of Books
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://cas.buffalo.edu/english/faculty/conte/syllabi/370/EndofBooks.htm
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney