Q3. What's the actual/virtual place of digital literary media?
Digital Literary Media Redefined
"Skiing the Beach" video essay by Ecotone editor
David Gessner.
The future of digital literary media is constrained only by technology itself. Just as communications from the static desktop-oriented computer migrate to smaller mobile devices — cell phones, iPhones, wrist watches — so literature will migrate.
In a way, the future of digital literary media is the future of the internet, which, according to WebsiteBuilder.com, is this:
While PCs were once the primary means of accessing the internet, we're now seeing internet-enabled devices such as PDAs and mobile phones that send and receive email and access the web. Soon, everything from your car to your refrigerator will be connected to the global network, communicating with each other wirelessly.
Electrolux, best known for its vacuum cleaners, has developed the Screenfridge, an internet refrigerator that manages your pantry, among other things. It emails a shopping list to your local supermarket and coordinates a convenient delivery time with your schedule. Say hello to a brave, new world.
What's surprising to me, given the rapid rate at which technology changes, is how long Electrolux's vision is taking to come to fruition. In the mid-1990s I worked for Western Area Power Administration's energy service program. As an energy program manager, I was aware of plans to use the refrigerator — as the central and largest appliance in the house's central and most used room — as the home's energy monitoring interface. That internet access and other systems management would share the interface is only logical.
Access anywhere, anytime (a slogan for pretty much everything nowadays, it seems) defines the future of digital literary media. What's that mean for ecological media?
Ecological media can be even more succinctly delivered — to your computer, phone, wrist watch, refrigerator. And before long, implanted directly into your brain (no, really, I mean it, and so does Pattie Maes). A brave, new world indeed. More like: Demagogues of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your internet connection!
Next: Q4