Network Writing: Week 7 (Sasha Lutz)

 Network writing has been one of the simpler chapters regarding digital literature. Like hypertext, it seems to be an integral part of everyday internet use in the modern age. One of the core parts of this class is the weekly “play” assignment where we explore a new type of digital literature. Rettberg writes, “Play is an essential aspect of electronic literature: that includes both playing with new media environments in order to explore their potential for storytelling and poetics, and. . . The network enables modes of collaborative creation not easily achieved in literature made for print” (308). The full potential of digital literature is wrought through community and accessibility. Of course, needing a device like a phone, ipad, or computer means that digital literature is behind a financial block, but so is physical literature and art. So, overall, electronic literature can reach more people. Later in the chapter, Rettberg writes about Sondheim’s piece The Internet Text, talking about “the often-abject place of the human body and consciousness within a network apparatus and an oppressive society,” and how “Software, computers, and network protocols are. . . they are prostheses in a different sense, as they augment, rearrange, and mangle human expression and. . .  contort in an impossible space in between the human and the machine” (322). On a side note, this reminded me of a show I watched a few years ago called Serial Experiments Lain. In it, the main character begins to use “The Wired,” the show’s equivalent of the internet. She essentially becomes two people, torn between her online persona and in-person self. In The Wired, people change on a fundamental level—the technology shapes who they are and allows them to connect with themselves in ways that would be impossible in the real world. Rettberg’s explanation almost perfectly encapsulates the show’s premise. Overall, network writing is important for the internet and our daily lives. As we continue to explore its uses, we also discover new ways of self expression and connectivity.

I looked at one website mentioned, jodi.org. I’ve never seen anything like it before. It brings you to a cryptic looking page with some hypertext words. Clicking on “surgery” leads you to a page with repeated animations, all the same, playing over and over in a checkerboard layout. You can click on them and they will lead you to other pages. Some have a smaller version of the same animation that you can click on, which will lead you all the way to one, large version of it. Clicking off of the tab and going back to it will also change the page that you’re on. I don’t know how this works and how this is considered digital literature, but it is interesting! Sometimes it seems like it’s causing my browser to crash, but that may also just be how the website is supposed to look. I can’t tell. 

Here is the link: http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/100cc/index.html