Making Writing Harder: Computer-Mediated Authorship and the Problem of Care

From simple spell-check to sophisticated autocomplete, algorithms increasingly intervene in the process of writing. This paper considers three recent examples of writing interfaces produced by practitioners of electronic literature, each with a distinct model of what kind of feedback or interference writers need – in other words, with a conception of how to care for writers’ minds. One of the main logics that shapes contemporary digital media, including corporate writing-assistance tools, is that software should make some task easier. The three algorithmic co-writers examined here carry out a different logic. Instead of trying to make writing easier, they make writing more difficult, posing sudden problems that the writer must solve by writing in a manner that they would otherwise not. The primary goal of the paper is to understand and distinguish these three systems’ pedagogical assumptions about what kind of difficulty writers need. The discussion concludes by arguing that electronic literature, seeking continuity with both Human-Computer Interaction and Cognitive Poetics, should do more to research the cognitive affordances of digital literary objects

Reframing the Networked Capacities of Ubiquitous Media

International audienceJames J. Gibson's concept of perceptual affordances has a long history, particularly within the field of human computer interaction (HCI) where the concept has been used in various ways to address both the material and cultural requirements of interactive systems. New modes of digital media which look to engage a range of affordances as present in contemporary smartphone platforms offer an opportunity to rethink this critical divide within the use of the concept of affordances. Defining a concordance between Gibson's use of the term and Manuel DeLanda's theory of assemblages, it becomes possible to chart the networks of affordances present in the interaction with and function of these new media forms. Through an analysis of Kate Pullinger's Breathe, a redefined understanding of the possibilities of affordances is developed, one that is concerned with both the materiality of the system itself and the speculative frame that is developed

Methodological nearness and the question of computational literature

The rise of the application of computational methods in both the study and production of literature poses questions about how to best read works of electronic literature which engage a wider sphere of human context beyond the literary text itself. Taking a cue from modes of “distant reading” that have taken advantage of computational methods in order to pursue empirical and sociologically-influenced readings of traditional textual corpora, the liminal case of “ambient literature” is examined. As a form of electronic literature developed out of the field of ubiquitous computing, ambient literature presents a literature which is intimately connected to the situation of the reader, offering a text whose meaning is both variable and specific to the conditions of its engagement. Having confronted analogous issues in other domains, traditions of research in human-computer interaction offer methodological insight into how such works might be read. Developing an account of how literary texts may be read from a distance through user studies, an ethnomethodological analysis of the experience of these hybrid works of electronic literature is advanced. By drawing connections between literary studies and human-computer interaction, new methods which focus on the analysis of the experience of multiple readers as they encounter works of electronic literature establish opportunities for future research into the contextual, embodied, and computational nature of literature today