Contemporary Literature & the Internet

Hi all,

I wanted to share what I found to be a fascinating article from the Guardian about the gradual inclusion of the internet into contemporary fiction. You can find it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011...t-laura-miller

I've found myself growing increasingly frustrated in the past few years with the apparent resistance among authors to directly address the manifold effects of the internet on our lives. So many current books seem to be set in the '80s or before, or in a not-too-distant future when current trends have ballooned to ridiculous proportions. If novels are set in contemporary times, they often gloss over the presence of the internet and toss in a token mention of "social media" or an "online affair". To me, it seems like the internet has pervaded so many facets of our lives in ways that are still unclear, and it's a challenge to even describe the experience of being "on the internet" for such a significant portion of our time (in work, leisure, research, etc.).

Although the topic may seem too mundane, I'd love to see an author really grapple with the internet in the way David Foster Wallace wrestled with our addiction to television in Infinite Jest. Is it just not possible to understand yet? Has anyone read any works of fiction that gave them a deeper understanding of our relationship with the internet?

Maybe it's because the big time writers of right now were born and raised in a world before the internet was really big and so they don't really have much to say on the topic. I know a lot of famous writers still use typewriters so they may even be a bit computer illiterate.

There are some crappy books written in IM format so that may be a sign of things to come.

This is an interesting question, and the first thing that comes to mind is the problem of naming things without dating your work. In fiction, saying something like "He got the files off the hard drive" is fine for now, but what happens in the near future when hard drives go the way of floppy drives? Same thing with brand names such as Netscape, America Online, Facebook, etc. Even things such as laptops, desktops, mice, and keyboards may seem like quaint notions in the not-so-distant future.

Using terms such as "social media" and expressions such as "going online" are problems as well. It's trendy, in other words. Still, there has to be a way to incorporate technology into timeless work. When we read stories set in the past, it is not a problem if people are using typewriters, for example. It is considered kind of timeless, but I think it works because brand names and trendy expressions from that era are not included. So, when it comes to technology, I think it is best to give things vague names such as file, input device, screen, etc.

I don't think writers should say things such as "She went online and received his friendship request on Facebook." That's going to date your work. Yet as quickly as things change, I think certain concepts in computer science will likely be with us for a very long time: saving and naming files, using some kind of input device, messaging and communicating with other users, etc. It takes a skilled writer to flush out what parts are timeless and it also takes a writer who knows more then a little about technology.

I suspect a reason some contemporary authors do not explicitly engage with the implications of the internet is to distance themselves from post-modernism, which stresses the existence of many worlds people live in. Regardless, I have to disagree with the OP's premise. There has been plenty of interesting sci-fi/speculative literature from the late 1950s to the present that discuss alternate reality fueled by advanced technology. Unfortunately, it tends to get ignored as "genre fiction" and dismissed because it takes place in the future instead of the present. There is a chilling and intelligent portrayal of the internet in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. It's not a run-of-the-mill "technology enslaves man" theme either; essentially, peoples' status on the internet becomes more important than their real lives, and Stephenson's insights into what living online means for civilization is interesting.

To be fair, I'll add that Stephenson and other sci-fi writers who wrote in the '90s were heavily influenced by the era's glamorized hacker culture, which has largely disappeared and has less relevance today.

I really don't care about reading the internet, so I'm fine with the way things are.

It was already being written about in 1909, here's a comment taken from a You Tube presentation:


Although I found the Machine Stops to be a brilliant piece of science fiction when I first read it in the early 1980's, I dismissed it as a remote surreality. Now with the internet, hand held devices, surveillance, obesity, GPS, automation and work cubicles, E.M. Forster's vision is perfectly clear and so is our destiny.

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Originally Posted by paradoxical

This is an interesting question, and the first thing that comes to mind is the problem of naming things without dating your work. In fiction, saying something like "He got the files off the hard drive" is fine for now, but what happens in the near future when hard drives go the way of floppy drives? Same thing with brand names such as Netscape, America Online, Facebook, etc. Even things such as laptops, desktops, mice, and keyboards may seem like quaint notions in the not-so-distant future.

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That's a good point, authors perhaps need to do something to "future proof" their work. Maybe the media can, mostly, be left to the imagination of the reader? "Bill stole the tax details; within seconds they were in Monica's possession. She passed them onto the authorities and within the hour Fred was in jail." No need to mention hard, disks, files, or any hardware. It's pretty obvious that email must have been used, to today's generation. Maybe in a hundred years telepathic contact with computers will be assumed?

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Maybe in a hundred years telepathic contact with computers will be assumed?

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I think this is quite likely.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

That's a good point, authors perhaps need to do something to "future proof" their work. Maybe the media can, mostly, be left to the imagination of the reader? "Bill stole the tax details; within seconds they were in Monica's possession. She passed them onto the authorities and within the hour Fred was in jail." No need to mention hard, disks, files, or any hardware. It's pretty obvious that email must have been used, to today's generation. Maybe in a hundred years telepathic contact with computers will be assumed?

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Im sorry, but writing now in a conscientious manner as if one will be read 200 years from now, smacks of, not so much arrogance, rather Don Quixoteness. And that is something which as a conscientious reader, is very palpable and not so much off-putting as farcical.

Writing about the internet on the internet is already too self-referential - but to include it in a work of fiction would depend on the genre. I mean fiction for escape - who wants to be reminded of the internet 'reality'. If science fiction - it's already passe, though Gibson's Neuromancer where everyone's connecting to the Matrix directly with their minds, well it was an idea that predates the all-pervading aspect (and without advertising) of the internet. There have been books written in text speak (I've only read reviews), and one I wouldn't recommend that takes place entirely in a 'chatroom' (yeah!).

Internet - useful for many aspects of life like news, cheap purchasing and comparison reviews, self-diagnosis, planning vacations, connecting with friends and family, music/video/games etc etc - and it's something everyone connected already knows about.

Literarily you'd just have to mention the Net in passing without going into specific details on what exactly the characters are downloading/viewing.

I remember Jerry Lewis bemoaning the death of quality comedy in sitcoms because whenever he tuned into a modern one it featured a sofa and a television - all the jokes seemed to reference the programs the cast was watching. He had a point, though television and the Web are now the modern Lingua Franca. Lose either one and you'd be 'illiterate' in many aspects of modern life (though probably more literate in others).