Comments on Bruce Sterling's Challenges
Over on the Wired blog, cyberpunk author and futurist Bruce Sterling wrote this twitter-esque manifesto list of 18 challenges in contemporary literature. I'd like to spend some time reflecting and commenting on each of these points. I think some of them are totally valid, but I don't believe that others of them are as solid as he thinks. I'll take them point by point and this may cover a series of posts to get to each of them.
1. Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is globalizing and polyglot.
The heart of literature is language. Languages are built by cultures, and though we are globalizing we are still the product of our own cultures. Unless we adopt an internationally recognized standard language and a uniform standard culture this will always be a hurdle. Given the lack of success in attempting this in the past (sorry Esperanto geeks) I don't see this changing any time soon. There are books that explore the confluence of cultures and that employ a melange of languages to express things. But even in today's globalizing society those books are of less interest to the broader public than books that have in their focus a particular worldview. The success of authors like Amy Tan, Jhumpa Lahiri, Haruki Murakami and many many others is a testament to that. Entire economies are built on the export of culture. I believe that we still exoticize the other, regardless of how close it may seem to us through our electronic connections.
2. Vernacular means of everyday communication - cellphones, social networks, streaming video - are moving into areas where printed text cannot follow.
Maybe I'm missing something, but language is still necessary for these communications. And language is both spoken and written. Text messaging is going into new places like Twitter and in Japan the Light Novel (where entire books are written on cell phones). But it still requires text. Social networks, while brief, still require text. Streaming video is great for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, but for the deaf and blind they are not terribly helpful without text. I don't buy for a minute that text cannot follow us into these three areas.
3. Intellectual property systems failing.
This is true, and I have no problem with this. I have felt for a long time that the copyright system is grossly unfair to people involved in creative works, because in the United States it binds this up for nearly a hundred years before they can become a part of the public domain. We've gotten to the point though where people just don't give a damn about copyright and are writing fanfiction and putting out fan art in such volumes that to hire the attorneys required to uphold the copyright would just destroy the companies and the authors. I mean, look at Harry Potter. They just got to the point with the HP fanfic that they just threw up their hands and said forget about it. There's just too much of it, coming from too many people that they just can't bother with prosecuting the whole thing without wasting tons of money on something that will come up again and again like a hydra. To that I say good riddance.
More later...
1. Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is globalizing and polyglot.
The heart of literature is language. Languages are built by cultures, and though we are globalizing we are still the product of our own cultures. Unless we adopt an internationally recognized standard language and a uniform standard culture this will always be a hurdle. Given the lack of success in attempting this in the past (sorry Esperanto geeks) I don't see this changing any time soon. There are books that explore the confluence of cultures and that employ a melange of languages to express things. But even in today's globalizing society those books are of less interest to the broader public than books that have in their focus a particular worldview. The success of authors like Amy Tan, Jhumpa Lahiri, Haruki Murakami and many many others is a testament to that. Entire economies are built on the export of culture. I believe that we still exoticize the other, regardless of how close it may seem to us through our electronic connections.
2. Vernacular means of everyday communication - cellphones, social networks, streaming video - are moving into areas where printed text cannot follow.
Maybe I'm missing something, but language is still necessary for these communications. And language is both spoken and written. Text messaging is going into new places like Twitter and in Japan the Light Novel (where entire books are written on cell phones). But it still requires text. Social networks, while brief, still require text. Streaming video is great for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, but for the deaf and blind they are not terribly helpful without text. I don't buy for a minute that text cannot follow us into these three areas.
3. Intellectual property systems failing.
This is true, and I have no problem with this. I have felt for a long time that the copyright system is grossly unfair to people involved in creative works, because in the United States it binds this up for nearly a hundred years before they can become a part of the public domain. We've gotten to the point though where people just don't give a damn about copyright and are writing fanfiction and putting out fan art in such volumes that to hire the attorneys required to uphold the copyright would just destroy the companies and the authors. I mean, look at Harry Potter. They just got to the point with the HP fanfic that they just threw up their hands and said forget about it. There's just too much of it, coming from too many people that they just can't bother with prosecuting the whole thing without wasting tons of money on something that will come up again and again like a hydra. To that I say good riddance.
More later...