Tag Archives: Rettberg

Electronic Literature and AI

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Scott Rettberg mentions, “poem and stories that are generated by computers, either interactively or based on parameters given at the beginning,” as a form of electronic literature (Rettberg 172). Does this sound familiar? Because to me it sounds like A.I. Rettberg even goes on to say that these generators, “stretch back to Christopher Stratchey’s 1952 M.U.C. Love Letter Generator” (Rettberg 172). So if this stretches all the way back to 1952, why is A.I. only gaining mainstream attention and gathering worry from the majority of people today?

The first reason is AI is more accessible today. You don’t have to know any code to create an AI generated piece of work, because the AI itself is already made by others. It is now in a digestible form for most of the population that has access to the internet. It’s like when Gutenberg’s printing press vastly improve literacy rates, because the material became more accessible to the masses. it also wasn’t being used by big corporations to ‘optimize profits,’ which is just a codeword for ‘we actually think AI can replace human jobs, even if most AI is actually more costly for us.’ Fear-mongering, if one will. AI, at least to my knowledge, was not being actively used against the majority of the population in any noticeable way.

Instead, in regards to the paper and the 1952 example, it was a tool for creativity—an experimental tool at that—that did not replace a human in any meaningful capacity, because the human was involved in making the AI itself and the prompt.

So what do we do now? Well, we take the tool back and thus our power back to use it the way we want to (not a replacement, but a tool), and also try to make laws surrounding AI use. Regulations are needed, and people have a right to know when AI is used and where specifically it is used.

Where does literature end?

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In his text “Electronic Literature,” Scott Rettberg describes the challenge of rethinking literature in a digital world. He sees electronic literature not as a digital replica of printed texts, but as a completely new literary practice that exploits the full potential of computers. The quote “Electronic literature is the result or product of literary activity created or performed using the computer” stuck in my mind. 

The concept of “literature” is undergoing a fundamental shift. It is no longer bound to pages, printer’s ink, or linear storytelling, but arises from the interplay of text, code, sound, image, and interaction. Where writing used to be the medium of meaning, today animations, algorithms, and digital interfaces also generate meaning. 

Rettberg also shows that electronic literature lies somewhere between art, technology, and experimentation. This opens up many possibilities, as electronic literature can be a visual installation, an interactive poem, or a game. This openness and broad scope make it difficult to define. “The term is somewhat fraught and often challenged as not sufficiently or accurately descriptive,” writes Rettberg. I find Rettberg’s observation that electronic literature simultaneously ties in with the history of literature and dissolves it particularly interesting. The computer does not replace the book, it expands it. Literature becomes a process, not a finished product. This blending of poetry and programming also challenges the role of the reader. Reading no longer means following a text, but controlling it. A click, a selection, an interaction changes the course of the story. We also saw this in the second week with hypertext. The reader becomes part of the system. 

Thus, literature does not end in the digital realm; it loses its boundaries. It becomes fluid, interactive, unpredictable. And that is precisely where its future lies: not in clinging to old forms, but in the courage to reinvent them again and again.

Evolutionary Media: In the Digital Age

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As someone who knew what they loved(books) from a very young age, my relationship with its concept and physicality has gone through many changes. None so drastic as what I feel today. When I was younger, I was read bedtime stories when I would be tired, and I would have story-times in class where we’d all sit on the carpet and listen to the teacher read. If I was feeling brave, I would look at a monster book I vividly remember having and quite boldly purchasing at a school book fair one year. As I grew older, the texts got a bit thicker, smaller even. I would read for fun while simultaneously read for school. I remember having large hardcover school textbooks on core subjects like History, Science, and English. Then the author’s became important around late middle school and definitely high school. Canonical writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck flooded my brain with their words and characters. And it was sometime in my late high school years that I listened to my first audiobook.

Just like how Professor Pressman states in her article, “In order to read Between Page and Screen, you must take, quite literally, a material turn. You must shift away from the traditional posture of holding a book and reading the text printed upon its pages.”, I too had to reorient myself to how I interacted with reading. Now I was listening to someone else’s voice reading the book. Sure, it was similar to the orality of being read to when little, but now there is no focal point. The voice is in my speakers or headphones, not in front of me. My hands weren’t preoccupied and anticipating to turn the page or use my pointer finger as a guide. I had a harder time focusing yet it made all the more sense to just simply use an audiobook. Or at least that’s how it felt when I gifted someone a physical book and they replied to me saying, “I only listen to audiobooks now.”

Now, you have easy access and purchase power to let’s say a text that you would find in a bookstore, right on your phone. And the phone would mimic turning the page, highlighting function etc…Furthermore, hypertexts like Marino’s story now force the reader to engage with the text but specifically through marginalia and the journey doesn’t have to be linear if you don’t want it to be. Texts, along with technology, our changing our literary landscape in drastic ways. And lastly as aforementioned Borsuk’s Between Page and Screen is a digital text that can only be read or rather translated through the eyes of technology. You engage with the text, almost working alongside it, by pointing the book towards the lens and watching the text come to life and float in front of your screen. It is a fascinating thing to not only experience but to be aware that we are in the midst of a great shift in the way we interact with media and literature; books are evolving, literature is augmenting itself, and we are guiding this change in the Digital Age.