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Sometimes I feel like a broken record. I say it over and over again — the Internet is making people more literate, not less. (We’ve written about this before — see Jennifer’s great post about “the new literacy” here).
Then a column like this comes along and I feel like I have to debunk it or at least go on a rant for a bit:
Click, tweet, e-mail, twitter, skim, browse, scan, blog, text: the jargon of the digital age describes how we now read, reflecting the way that the very act of reading, and the nature of literacy itself, is changing. The information we consume online comes ever faster, punchier and more fleetingly. Our attention rests only briefly on the internet page before moving incontinently on to the next electronic canapé…The internet has evolved a new species of magpie reader, gathering bright little buttons of knowledge, before hopping on to the next shiny thing. It was inevitable that more than a decade of digital reading would change the way we do it…Meanwhile, a generation is tuned, increasingly and sometimes exclusively, to the cacophony of interactive chatter and noise, exciting and fast moving but plethoric and ephemeral. The internet is there for snacking, grazing and tasting, not for the full, six-course feast that is nourishing narrative. The consequence is an anorexic form of culture.
I was planning on writing a post where I say: “Hey Ben Macintyre of The Times (UK), the Internet has NOT sucked dry our collective attention spans. In fact, because of the Internet, we’re actually constantly reading and writing and targetting our language to different audiences more. On top of that, storytelling is actually undergoing a revival (think This American Life, The Moth, SpeakEasy, and more).”
I was going to try to argue his column to death, pretend that I never got distracted by the Internet, that it’s never cut into my writing time, all to prove a point to Mr. Macintyre, but then I came across a post that gave me pause. It was too well-written not to quote. This post from the Electric Literature blog (by Helen Rubinstein) said everything that I’ve been thinking about the internet as distraction:
…lately, my morning tactic has been to try to write for as long as I can possibly bear before finally opening my window onto the living world. You know, the pretend-window that I pretend-open by pretend-pressing some pretend-buttons. On my computer screen, which is also my canvas, my instrument, my palette, and my page. Does any other art have it so hard?
Okay, email is a temptation, I know. But the post also says how you can’t make the leap to say that this distraction means the end of literature, the end of people’s attention spans for anything artful, the end of it all. And that’s what I was trying to say!
On principle, I’m reluctant to entertain any question that, like this one, reeks of literary doomsdayism. I hate hearing about the death of the novel, the poor prospects for literature today—all of it feels false, coming as it does at a time when people seem to be reading, in some form or another, quite a lot. I don’t like to believe that the spray of newfangled digi-stuff really represents such a monumental change, even for the literary world. We’re still communicating and we’re still living. We’re still making up stories and writing them down and giving them away to be read.
I guess this leaves us in limbo. The Internet is a paradigm shift and it isn’t. People are still writing and reading — the Internet hasn’t killed this — but it does, at times, tempt us with its distractions. Where does that leave us, writers and artists? Is the Internet in all its glory (Wikipedia, social media, YouTube) a boon for you and your work, creativity, and productivity? Or the opposite? Or something in between? The Electric Literature post doesn’t quite answer the question but beautifully states the problem. The Times article misses the point. I don’t have answers, but I’m just glad people are talking about it.
Well, firstly – I’ve always been an avid book reader, but I was never one to read the newspaper or magazines. Since blogs exploded and Google Reader became my new best friend, I read MUCH more than I ever did before. News blogs, literary blogs, science and discovery blogs, and the fun, trashy stuff too.
Secondly, yes – I must admit, the internet can distract me while I’m writing. But, for me, I don’t think this is a bad thing. I use the internet to support what I’m writing and to take quick breaks. I’m the kind of person who needs that. Otherwise, I would end up staring into space for god knows how long.
I think the Internet is excellent as a new medium, e.g. Electric Literature and Rick Moody’s Twitter novel, and also for helping writers better connect with their readers.
That said, it is really difficult to close Firefox and Twitter and all that and then start writing. Once I’ve found my focus, I’m fine, but it’s the difficulty in finding that focus which prompts me to move into a small hut with no Internet connection in the middle of the woods.
But if it came down to an either/or situation, I’d still much rather have the Internet around.
this thing ate my whole original comment. I will endeavor to recreate it.
I don’t know if I read more with the Internet than I would without it; at 25, I’ve been online for more than half my life. I do know that we can read more–faster, cheaper–than without it. I can read sports articles, music news, astronomy updates, and politics briefings in the span of thirty minutes in the morning. this is unparalleled access to information, and I appreciate the breadth.
the Internet also offers a much wider expanse of publishing markets, and this was a prime reason I started writing a ton of short stories earlier in the year. I looked at the sheer volume of available markets and figured a few would have me.
after a bunch of short stories, I wanted to tackle something larger, so I wrote a novel (of debatable quality). I had tried many times before to write a novel, but never got close.
I credit the Internet a lot with my finishing the novel, if only for providing examples of outlets. once you know there are venues for just about anything, it frees you up. freed me up, anyhow. I also credit my wanton unemployment.
now I’m trying to write really short stuff. unlike this response, hiyo!
It can be a distraction, but at the end of the day, I feel it boosts my creativity, in addition to giving me an outlet for my work.
Best,
Heather Ingemar
http://ingemarwrites.wordpress.com/
At least for those inclined to find the inspiration, the internet makes it possible to find an incredible variety of writing (style, content, and—yes—length) whenever we want it, almost always for free. It’s an empowering equalizer.
Luddites and doomsayers can say what they want, but you can’t get exposure to so many different viewpoints any other way. Simple as that.
Amen. I totally agree with all of these comments. Thanks, Lit Drift, for quoting the post!
I’ve been working on being less rigid about the boundary between the internet & writing — working on achieving that unremarkable harmony between the two — but it’s still hard. Maybe it’s something like switching quickly between two stories, two novels — though, in this case, more than two. A simple matter of how-many-imagined-worlds-can-my-little-brain-hold?…
[...] Lit Drift – The Internet is NOT Killing Storytelling. Or Is It? [...]
As a reader, I think I read more–though not necessarily the classics or full length novels online, and maybe that does mean I spend less time with a book or e-book. But I think everybody is reading more, those who wouldn’t read books or short story anthologies are indeed reading all lengths online. It’s like what Reader’s Digest did for folks as a “bathroom” book.
As a writer, I find myself writing constantly–stories, yes, but online every email, every comment, everything I write and read is going to improve my writing when I get to the storytelling. I’ve done twitter fiction, hypertext, short stories, flash, and poems. If it ain’t coming to me, at least I’m spending time reading and writing. If the idea and words hit, well, nothing’s going to keep me from writing and it’s real quick and easy to click open Pages (Mac) and write.
While NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) could probably happen without the Internet, it would not happen on nearly the same scale.
2,427,190,537 words written this November, with the NaNoWriMo website and emails encouraging the writers.
Over two BILLION words written in one month. Hmm. Kinda have to vote that the Internet is supporting literacy.