Capital, logistics, and the word: Social media

as literary formDr. Marco Adria

University of Albertamarcoadria.com

Media Ecology Association 2015

Social media as a new literary form allows for speed-up.

James Carey: An increase in the speed introduced by a medium affords innovations in logistics.

Effects of social media on literature are to be found in new ways of coordinating the movement of social and economic capital.

Retrievals from history are useful for understanding these changes.

The invention of a new medium in history is followed by a transformation of literary forms.

Transformation occurs in literary methods and style.

Carey:

telegraph “made prose lean and unadorned”

movement of capital in space transformed

opportunities for arbitrage reduced.

Commoditization of the novel began in the 19th century.

Publishers began to pay a percentage based on the price of a book and the number of books sold.

The telegraph was invented in 1837.

Before 1837:

1818, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

1826, The last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper

After 1837:

1885, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

1903, The Call of the Wild, Jack London

1837, Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist is published in monthly installments – includes journalistic concerns for real-life scenarios, much darker in tone than its movie adaptations. 

Gothic (horror) novels become popular in the second half of the 19th century, including Wuthering Heights (1847), Emily Bronte.

http://s7.computerhistory.org/is/image/CHM/500004786-05-01?$re-zoomed$

As with the telegraph, the text of social media arrive lean, unadorned, and sped-up.

Focal online text is the list.

The list is a necessary but not sufficient component of “going viral.”

Buzzfeed algorithm monitors 120 million “uniques” of audiences including Time, AOL News, TMZ, and Life.

Items “going viral” are given prominence for users.

My son the doctoral student . . .

The founder of Buzzfeed, Jonah Peretti, published an article in the critical theory journal Negations (Winter 1996):

“Capitalism and schizophrenia: Contemporary visual culture and the acceleration of identity formation/dissolution”

http://manitoumessenger.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/buzzfeed-graphic-844x1024.jpg

The author becomes a zombie or ghost – the authorless voice.

The Mimamsa, a tradition of Hindu philosophy, has been considered a form of authorless voice (Bilimoria, 1995). 

Zombies have no will of their own and are slaves. In Haitian tradition, they are under the control of the bokor.

Frankenstein was resurrected by science. 

Although traditional zombies are slow and unintelligent, in popular culture they are active and directed. They spread disease. An example is the Left 4 Dead video game series.

http://5gsandacupofjoe.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/zombie_apocalypse_poster_by_roosterstencil1.jpg

The audience becomes a cipher, engaged in pattern recognition rather than reading.

For the literary critic Northrop Frye, the Bible was the “great code.” 

The movie The imitation game is part of the current fascination with codes and code-breaking.

Alan Turing is viewed less as an inventor or creator than as a figure who could break through to the existing message

Douglas Coupland points to McLuhan’s offer to us of a “key” to the Internet.

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New modes of literary expression take the form of aggregations, with a continuously shifting point of view – a form of automatic writing.

This is Peretti’s “capitalism and schizophrenia.”

In spiritualism, spirits take control of the hand of a medium.

Automatic writing, or psychography, is the ability to write without consciousness.

Automatic writers can use pencil on paper, planchette, or ouija board.

http://i1.wp.com/www.boingboing.net/images/_psycograph_psyco-0.jpg?resize=269%2C425

Er Ventriloco, by Trilussa (Carlo Alberto Salustri), 1871-1950

http://www.otrcat.com/z/harry-lester-otrcat.com.jpg