Poetry, Technology and the Internet
Technology has provided people with better education and more
leisure, giving more people enough skill and time to write. The
range of writers' experiences has been extended by TV and cheap
travel but the craft of writing has hardly been affected by
technological progress. Though it's true that Caxton made texts
more easily available, Biro made writing easier and DTP made it
possible for writers to produce books themselves, distribution
methods have remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years.
The early pioneers of DTP met a lot of resistance. Critics said that
Yet as soon as the price was right, most writers found DTP
invaluable. In the early days there were many articles on its
benefits (and endless humorous pieces about spell checkers). A
sure sign of the shape of things to come is the current glut of
articles about The Internet.
- it was no use to real writers
- it would adversely affect style
- Shakespeare didn't need it!
So what is the Internet and is it useful for poets?
The Internet is an international network of computer networks, a
means of transfering files and information. About a million
computers (about 20 million people) are connected. Usage doubles
every ten months. The Internet could be a boon to writers. Many
are using it already. Amongst the facilities offered are
As texts come out of copyright they're being
scanned in and made available on the Net. Works ranging in
popularity from the Bible to (for example) Merry's The Picture of
Paris (1790) can be read and searched as easily as files on your
own machine. It's as if your machine contained a huge library of
Just as the DTP revolution helped to democratize and
demystify printing, so the internet does the same for distribution.
It's easy to 'publish' your book -- if you put a copy of your files in
the right place then anyone on the internet can look at your work
as easily as they can look at their own files. Various literary
magazines already exist on the net -- one or two even pay! Of
course the magazines are free, but since the publishing and
distribution costs are minimal, the magazines are far cheaper to
run than paper magazines. Their readership is also far higher -- a
new magazine is likely to be downloaded by well over a thousand
people in the first fortnight alone. Letters electronically mailed to
the editor can be added to the current edition, rather than
subsequent ones. Typos can be immediately corrected as well. It's
too early to predict what implications all this will have for books,
but remember how quickly classical LPs disappeared once CD
players became sufficiently cheap?
What do you hate about workshops? Their
infrequency? The chore of traveling to them? The lack of a text in
front of you? The lack of time for considered comment? The
people who go to them?
The internet and e-mail offer a way for distant writers to keep in
touch, exchanging poems and comments at their leisure. The
distractions of the local writers circle disappear. You can e-mail to
a small, scattered coterie of friends or, if you're brave, post poems
to a computer 'bulletinboard' for all to read and comment upon.
I've been wary of computer hype in the past, but recent
improvements in speed, cost and especially ease-of-use of the
internet have already turned last year's wild prophecies into fact.
Non-computer-literate people are joining in and contributing
material, helping to correct the non-humanities bias on the net. I
think that the Internet's affects will be more pervasive that those
of DTP. Internet use will improve many people's writing, and (or
should I say but?) will also encourage more novice writers to
'publish'. I don't think the quantity or quality of the best writing
will change. There will be a growth in 'hypertext' (non-linear,
multimedia writing), but otherwise I think that style will be
unaffected. The biggest changes will be in publishing (especially of
the specialist magazines) when a critical
mass of readers and writers have joined the Net. With the cost of
an internet connection already down to about 10 pounds a month (plus the
price of a modem) and with the available material increasing so
rapidly, I think that these changes will happen sooner rather than
This article first appeared in Acumen 21, Jan 1995
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