Book and PowerBook: Writing and Technology
Steve Ungar hosts the panel discussion and introduces the five members of the panel. Anastasiíà Gosteva discusses the history of writing and printing. Gosteva reflects on the way technology creates the conditions for revolutionary cultural practices.
Emil Zopfi argues that technology makes a person more independent. He shares how computers have allowed him to do his job with more ease because the Internet has placed the library and the post office at his fingertips. However, he sometimes feels like a computer technician more than a writer because of all the programming he has to do on his computer. He invokes George Orwell’s prediction that technology would invade people’s privacy. Zopfi feels that computers and hypertext mark the end of linear text searches. Hypertext is a challenge for new writers as every new media is because it creates new forms of storytelling.
Triệu Hẚi Phan talks about how some writers refuse to touch computers because writers are inspired in different ways. The popularity of computers in Vietnam is shown in the growing numbers of families who own a computer. Phan notes how we rarely question how technologies influence our lives. He feels that the computer does not improve the creative process of writing. He argues that machines are products of our thinking and our minds and therefore computers will never be able to master humanity, although he acknowledges the influence digital technologies have on culture.
András Petőcz talks about how freedom of information and the press was viewed as a threat to the ruling government in many countries in the past and how the progress of technology is always a political question for some countries. He views people as happy with computers, but not really aware of the full potential of it.
R. Brooks Landon, faculty member of the University of Iowa, says that writing is a technological act. Landon discusses the deep awareness of ironies we find ourselves in and focuses on how these ironies are realized in cyberpunk fiction.
In: International Writing Program Archive
Authors: Anastasiya Gosteva , Emil Zopfi, Triệu Hẚi Phan, András Petőcz, Brooks Landon
Date Recorded: September 09, 1998
Program: --
Format: discussion
Contributors: Steve Ungar
Topics: George Orwell; hypertext; computers; technology; writing; imagination; thought process; power of technology; politics; linear vs. nonlinear