Is the withdrawal from digital technologies and the return to old ones an option?

The topic for this week’s class discussion is Post-digitalism. The readings assigned are Crónica de viaje by Jorge Carrión, “Post-Digital Writing” by Florian Cramer, and “Post-Digital Print: a Future Scenario” by Alessandro Ludovico. The suggested readings are “El arte Nuevo de hacer libros” by Ulises Carrión, “The End of Paper. Can Anything Actually Replace the Print Page? and “What is Open Access” by Peter Suber. The prompt for this week’s blog entry is on the relationship between post-digitalist theories and open access politics.

            As we have learned in this course, the Internet and electronic/digital mechanisms have changed the way humans do things. In the past, book technology was highly valued. For centuries, it remained as the main method of writing reproduction. Many writers did not think twice about how they wanted their research, novels, or nonfiction works to appear. For them, the book technology was the most obvious option. Nonetheless, the surge of the Internet, and its accessibility to the public in recent decades, along with the rapid reproduction of electronic/digital devices allowed authors to explore other options not accessible to them before.

            The Internet along with other digital mediums soon became platforms for electronic literature and net art along other forms of expression. Many writers saw more opportunities for creativity using these platforms than in the use of print or book technology. Not surprisingly, a boom of digitalized works started to emerge, but not without a cost that in a way can be compared to the initial stage of book production.

            In the past, the first books that began to be produced were expensive and not many copies were reproduced. Originally, they were elaborated by hand, but later in the print era they began to be massively reproduced. For a long period, these first books were restricted from the common people and only the upper classes, mainly academics or theologians, had access to them. The surge of print, print houses, the changes on some educational polices, and the concept of public libraries brought a drastic change to the information disseminated through the book technology. These books that, at one time, had restricted use due to price and accessibility began to be more affordable and accessible for all people regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds.

In spite of the great acceptability that print and book technologies have had for generations, there are some critics that argue that the introduction of digital mediums and electronic devices are threatening the existence of these technologies. Alessandro Ludovico considers that print based businesses are being threatened by the digitalization of information. He mentions that the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times newspapers are “barely surviving” and quotes the founder of Netscape, Marc Andreessen who stated, “You talk to any smart investor who controls any amount of money…There is not value in these stocks prices attributable to print anymore at all. It’s gone.” (56).

            Although the digital era at the beginning did face a similar issue to that of the print era, since its accessibility implied a cost to the consumer, over the years many people began to have access to digital mediums and interfaces. It cannot be ignored however that, still today, electronic devices, accessibility to the Internet, and digital mediums have restricted access, since millions of people around the world don’t have access to computers or any digital apparatus. In spite of this, there are some critics that feel already disenchanted from this so-called digital era since many companies are using the Internet and other digital mediums to monopolize their businesses, and there are others that already see a “post-digital” face to this “digital era”.

Florian Cramer in “Post Digital Print” considers that “‘post-digital’ can be used to describe either a contemporary disenchantment with digital information systems and media gadgets, or a period in which our fascination with these systems and gadgets has become historical.” (3) More than a “fascination in decline” what seems to be happening is that more people are pushing for a more “fair use” of these mediums which for many advocates this turns into “open access”.

According to Peter Suber “Open access” is a term that refers to the publication of electronic literature and online journals and other works directly tied or produced in an electronic environment that are free of charge to the public and, which use can be unrestricted.  As attractive as this OA might seem, there are some that oppose it, since as Suber mentions OA does not release the author or producer from the cost involved in the creation of the work or product. There are other critics whose views on digitalization are more extreme and push for a return to a pre-digital era, but for Creamer:

a Thoreauvian-Luddite digital withdrawal many seem a tempting option for many, it is fundamentally a naïve position, particularly in an age when even the availability of natural resources depends on global computational logistics…In context of the arts, such a withdrawal seems little more than a return to the 19^th- century Arts and Crafts movement, with its programme of handmade production as a means of resistance to encroaching industrialization. Such (romanticist) attitudes undeniably play an important role in today’s renaissance of artists’ printmaking, handmade film labs, limited vinyl editions, the rebirth of the audio cassette, mechanical typewriters, analog cameras and analog synthesizers. (4).

As one can observe, there are many different views on the direction that digital media should take. It is true that old technologies have had a huge impact in the diffusion of information. Nonetheless, to deny other forms of production might seem more cruel than the extension of these old technologies, since it would be a complete denial to the humans need for advancement which might be achieved through imagination, exploration, and examination of new forms and possibilities.