The Future of Print and Cyberculture Essay -- Writing Writers Technolo

The Future of Print and Cyberculture As our class learned from the last assignment in which we created a writing technology, the introduction of new technology can change the way that people operate on a day-to-day basis. Inventions like the automobile and the television, for example, have forever changed the culture in many countries. However, no invention has changed the world more than the computer. In fact it has been the computer that has made the most recent technological phenomenon, the Internet, possible. While the Internet has made obvious changes in the way people communicate, it has also changed how we perform other functions that are as fundamental to us as reading and writing. One of the issues the Internet and similar technologies have forced upon us is the switch from reading from textbooks to reading what is referred to as "hypertext" on the computer screen. Because the Internet has turned into such an extensive source of information, many people find themselves reading from the screen what they normally would have read from plain text in the past. Although this is a process that a lot of people are uncomfortable with, James Sosnoski, author of the essay Hyper-readers and their Reading Engines, believes that reading from computer screens will soon become commonplace. "Though I readily acknowledge that many persons do not like to read from their screens at this time, I assume that over a period of time, the practice will become so habitual that it will seem 'natural' - just as it now seems customary to use a computer rather than a typewriter," he said (404). Reading hypertext is different from the reading that we are accustomed to for a variety of reason s, one of which being that people tend to be more selec... ...de Web is a vast (hyper) text that we read with such increasing frequency that it has become increasingly difficult as the day wears on to dial up one’s account in order to access the Web because so many of its readers are already online," (401). Bringing publishing opportunities to the masses and having speed and convenience applied to written communication sure sounds like an enhancement to me. Works Cited: Landow, George. "Twenty Minutes into the Future, or How Are We Moving Beyond the Book?" Writing Material: Readings from Plato the Digital Age. New York: Longman, 2003. 214-226. Lesser, Wendy. "The Conversation." Writing Material: Readings from Plato the Digital Age. New York: Longman, 2003. 227-233. Sosnoski, James. "Hyper-readers and their Reading Engines." Writing Material: Readings from Plato the Digital Age. New York: Longman, 2003. 400-417