print technology

Pedro Barbosa recalls in this interview his memories of the first studies and works of electronic literature back in the 1970s when he was a student at the University of Porto. Starting from considerations about his collaborative works he makes a comparison between printed literature tradition and the age of new media focusing on the paradigmatic change of this very transitional period with live in and the differences of the creative work. Furthermore he makes an interesting statement on regard of the aesthetics of new media by comparing works of electronic literature with the oral tradition. In the end he mentions some of the milestones of electronic literature that he considers important.

While many critics have compared the current digital age in communications media with the print revolution that began in the 15th century, these discussions have focused primarily on the differences, as opposed to the similarities between the two moments in history (Bolter, Landow, Hayles). As an author and critic involved in exploring new approaches to digital fiction, I, too, am keenly aware of the distinct differences between the age of print and the current digital age. Nevertheless, I have also been struck by many similar concerns in the specific types of literary experimentation taking place in response to new authoring and publishing technologies today with those undertaken in the past in response to print technology. In this paper, I consider specific instances of experimentation that arose in response to print technology in works of fiction published in the eighteenth century (Richardson, Pope, Sterne) with literary experimentation in response to digital technologies (Moulthrop, Montfort/Strickland, Rodgers).

(Source: Author's abstract ELO 2013, http://conference.eliterature.org/critical-writing/beyond-binaries-cont…)