I cannot help but want to agree at least in spirit with Restak's criticism of "neterature" especially when I think of all the English 101 essays I've read in the past six or seven years.

I have come to the conclusion that most of my students don't read and their ability to formulate language is suffering for it. I cannot blame the internet/email/instant messengers for the decline (that would be as slippery as saying TV is the cause of violence or depravity or immorality -- I cannot help but mention the whole Janet Jackson incident -- talk about glass teats), but there is something going on. Orthography for one is definitely changing -- I cringe at the day that IM-spelling becomes acceptable. But maybe I'm just fast becoming a dinosaur...

My forays in to mythology, most of which began as oral traditions, there was something "lost" when stories were written down. The rhetorical and performative moment was captured, put down on paper, codified, and replicated. Some would say it's uniqueness, it's one-time-ness was lost. But, then, we gained a great deal, too. With out recording, be it written or electromagnetic or digital, many oral stories would be gone.

I'm not sure if there's enough of a difference between "neterature" and plain old literature. The difference is medium. But I think the shift from oral to written is a much bigger change than from page to computer screen. I know I generally dislike reading long passages on the computer; perhaps my brain hasn't full adapated. I think most of my students read solely on the screen, when they read at all. I wonder what the next step will be? Purely virtual texts? Cybernetic texts where the brain receives data/words/information/images/senses directly through a jack?

Again, thinking out loud...

ED

Restak, you traitor! Of course you mention the NEW book, not the one you published with MY press. Bah! (Yes, I know this is how these things work, but call me partisan. :>)

While Joseph's "shallow and callow" critique is actually one often lobbied at Restak -- he's generally viewed as a bit surface-level -- I don't think that these two takes on "neterature" are actually incommensurable. Perhaps the internet is rewiring the brains of the youth, though this seems somewhat reductive -- I'd be more inclined to say that numerous phenomena have given rise to what one might call a bite-size culture, where the need to pay sustained attention simply doesn't arise. However, this does not exclude the possibility that great literature will be created *within* that (excuse my using this word) paradigm. In other words, whatever literature the net gives birth to will probably incorporate its fast-paced, bite-sized nature.

In other other words, Restak may not be jumping to conclusions, but I think he's jumping to judgment. Yes, the internet is one part of the (excuse me again) digital revolution, and yes, digital media are affecting the way we view information and art -- both the way we physically access them and the way we think about them. But at the same time, yes, digital literature and art is incunabular, and what Restak sees as a dumbing down may only be the birth pangs of a new art form based on quick access, quick connections, multimedia, and eventually even things like immersive environments.

In other words, I basically agree with you, Joseph, but I think that the phenomenon Richard is pointing to will actually be a crucial part of the new literature.

As far as this blogger is concerned, Joseph has pointed to a very provocative article, and this has, predictably, generated a stimulating discussion for me, at the least. To put on my art historian hat, (who would have thought I'd use it so frequently in this space), we needn't worry about great artists finding their way to the latest in any medium or technology that comes along, including those we can't even dream of yet. But I'm having a lot of trouble with the whole 'great artist' notion anyway. Canons are fairly problematic propositions and I'm all for shaking them up. In that sense, perhaps the access problem which existed with writing is eased here -- back to oral traditions in the sense that many more (almost anyone?) can put their stuff out there.

But what Restak raises for me is more the question of audience. In the myth conception, we all sat around the fire waiting for the greatest storyteller of them all to arise and sing it out. The audience for net writing is hardly that! And I applaud Restak for reminding us that it IS a problematic audience in how different of an audience it is from mediums we are more conversant with. Certainly, yes, we are in the baby stages with this medium. Nonetheless, virtually everyone in the U.S. and in many other places has access to the enfant terrible, for good AND ill. I'm on board with Restak - we are irresponsible as academics, as citizens, and in my case, as a teacher, if we don't try and sort out implications. There are some dangers to pay attention to while we all re-wire our brains. I look forward to thinking about them together in this course.

My comment follows a very interesting discussion at Town Hall last night.
I have a problem with the idea that the "new generation" is unable to write. Is it really the case that two generations ago, before the explosion of modern media that most people really were better readers and writers? Or are we missing part of the picture? What percentage of the poulation has an opportunity to succeed or fail in English 101 that would never have gotten to that point 50 years ago? How many people who would have never composed their ideas in writing at all are now using text messages and e-mail to communicate. Consider the boom in the community college world in the last 35 years. Many of these people would have never set foot in a higher education classroom before that opportunity was born. So I would say that we have to examine the users of these new technologies as a goup within the context of the entire population and then compare them to that same group as it existed before that technology was introduced. Like reading and writing, which was once the technology of a few and slowly became a standard skill of Westerners, computer technology, especially web-based, is becoming a standard skill of our culture. Yes in some places we are replacing one kind of writing with another, but in general I would hypothesize that as a population we are writing and reading more than ever in our history with a wider than ever spectrum of quality for all to see. I just don't think it is a simple thing. Technology is evidence of a change in our culture - not an independent driver. I wouldn't say it's all good, but Neo-Luddites beware of painting with too broad a brush.

As an addition to Beth's post, which I think is absolutely right, I want to add that the web also makes public consumption of less-than-correct (or less-than-aesthetic) writing far easier than it was before the advent of the internet. Two generations ago kids with naive questions, teenage angst, or weird fixations talked to one another in private; today, they talk on message boards, and are lampooned in handy digest format on SomethingAwful.com's "Weekend Web" features. When most of us were growing up, you put your lousy poetry (yes, folks, I think there's such thing as lousy poetry -- SO elitist ;>) in your notebook, and hopefully burned it later; today, it goes on your website, and we've seen how ineradicable those can be. So to some degree, we're falling prey to what Thomas Gilovich calls the availability heuristic -- more incorrect writing is accessible to us, so we assume that more writing is incorrect.

Which is not to close the issue of whether digital media are affecting attention spans or writing skills, but I think Beth touched on an important aspect, and I just wanted to add to that.