Computer Age Literature

The appearance - a sudden, in fact, during the life of one generation - computer technology could not but affect what is displayed on the screens: on the texts themselves. And certainly affected. Although this influence should be considered moderate: for the most part computers have developed what was originally incorporated in the texts, without offering any major innovations.

Suppose such an irreplaceable computer achievement as hypertext. Very comfortable, yes! However, the prototype of hypertext existed in the "book" literature always, I mean the numbering of pages. Previously, the reader opened the page by reading the link, now the computer user navigates to the desired page by clicking on the link. The transition methods are essentially the same. So in almost everything: the type design, the editing of the written text (writing), etc.
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However, sooner or later the number of innovations can develop into quality. On this occasion, I have a couple of considerations. It will also be interesting to find out how readers evaluate the prospects for the existence of literature in the computer age.

Consideration 1. Variability of events

The idea is not new.

In computer toys, there is a variation of events, in a literary work there is no variation. The character of a computer game is able to move in space, which, although limited, is nevertheless extensive enough to create the illusion of freedom. He wanted - he went to the right, he wanted - to the left. The protagonist of a literary work of such an ability is completely lacking: if Anna Karenina is destined to throw herself under a train, she will definitely rush, live to see the October Revolution, marry the People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR and be shot in 1937. And you see, it would be funny.

Writers have always known about the variability of events, because each plot is a set of several consecutive variants from innumerable possible. Many writers played on variability, attributing several different endings to a single literary work. A classic example is the story of O. Henry “The Roads We Choose,” but the American was hardly the first. Another thing is that paper books do not have a variational way of presenting events: if all the options, even having provided them with the appropriate links, are placed in one volume, it will turn out to be a hardly understandable jumble. And on the computer screen a new quality can be easily achieved.

Imagine that the reader of Anna Karenina, wanting something extraordinary, chooses the appropriate option, and ... the heroine of the Tolstoyan novel begins to behave accordingly. Technical implementation is not difficult, the problem is different: composing texts for each of the potentially possible moves. The volume of texts increases in a landslide progression, writers do not draw such volumes, as artists would not draw computer landscapes, if landscapes were drawn by hand and not generated automatically.

Consequently, the problem is in the manual writing of texts. When the literary texts begin to be generated automatically, then their volumes will lose their meaning, and the literature will acquire a new quality - the variability of events. This is how I see the future of Leo Tolstoy, who has been working on the programming of the new novel “Anna Karenina” for years. In addition to Tolstoy’s signature style, there will be many, many possible plot intricacies in the novel, so an intrigued reader will have to break his head over which of the possible plots to continue reading.

Consideration 2. Adaptation of the text

Here is another fundamental opportunity to bring an unprecedented quality to literature.

As you know, readers are different - with different levels of training. Some get aesthetic pleasure from the "Brothers Karamazov", the other "The Da Vinci Code" seems like a decent book. It depends not only on the intellect, but also on the age. What is interesting to a ten-year-old child, the old man, wise with life, will not read. Plus, time constraints, characteristic of the modern era: sometimes you want to read a new novel by the writer N, yes there is no time. We have to postpone reading indefinitely or refuse it altogether.

“For this, there are books for different age categories. If you are 10 years old, read adventure literature, and if 50 years old - scientific. The same applies to works of different volume. There is a time for reading, read a thick novel, no time for reading - short stories. Quite busy let cost news headlines. Everyone chooses reading for themselves according to interests, age and volume: it always has been and always will be, ”they will tell me.

Everything is correct, however, adults and children, intellectuals and their mental opposites live in a single universe, they are concerned about the same problems. The problem is identical, but the level of understanding is different: in this respect, the volume of the text is directly linked to the ability to perceive them - the correlation can be traced clearly. Volume and complex texts - for intellectuals; short and unpretentious stories - for children or uncleans and intellectually not developed intellectually or aesthetically.

So, do writers continue to write separately for adults and children, separately for popular brochures and scientific papers? Thanks to computer technology is completely optional.

Imagine a slider that marks the degree of volume, that is to say adaptability, of the text: one end of the slider indicates the full text, the opposite end of the slider - the most concise adapted text. The full text is a thick volume by Anna Karenina for leisure intellectuals. The reader, who does not feel himself as such, moves the slider to an intermediate position and gets the text of the novel halved.

I draw your attention, we are talking only about the author's abbreviation. Perhaps Lev Tolstoy could have cut the novel in half if he wished, and he would have done well, probably he could have cut it any number of times with the same result. Why not, if the author's adaptation is able to introduce young people to literature and develop those whose aesthetic preferences leave much to be desired? It would not have been necessary to compose the adolescent “Caucasian Captive” separately: the work could turn out to be a novel in the extreme right position of the slider, a story in the intermediate position and a story in the extreme left position.

Again, technical implementation is not a problem: it is enough to place pointers to the hierarchical level of a specific text, duplicating the html structure with its font notation, and so on. I do not know how it is called in computer typography, but the meaning is clear, I hope. Suppose there are ten possible positions of the slider - ten levels of hierarchy: when you change the position of the slider, the text at the corresponding hierarchical levels is shown or, on the contrary, hidden from the reader's view. Elementary Watson.

It is necessary to correct the process not at all of the registration of texts, but of writing. Writers will need to keep track of the levels of the hierarchy: which phrase or paragraph to which one they belong to - so that text abbreviations as a result of changing the position of the slider does not lead to semantic or fabled distortions.

The prototype of this possibility in the "book" literature is the small print of individual paragraphs. Reception is relatively rare and inefficient, so that the interface adaptation of texts, if it ever turns out to be implemented, can be considered a new quality in the literary business.

These are my thoughts on this subject - I hope it was interesting. I, in turn, are interested in your opinion on the future of computer era literature. Therefore, I propose to take part in a small survey.