Let me begin by telling you how old I am. I remember the first telegraphic appliance, I remember how my father, a railway attendant, put its magic powers to his use. I remember how he used the incredulous device to communicate, to tell the attendants at the next station line when the last train had left. When the next one was going to come. No surprises, precise exchange of meaningful data; all in the sequence of the pointing finger and the telegraph’s awaiting ledge. I also must tell you that learning how to tame ‘this beast’, how to utilize its powers, was a revelatory experience; it was an initiation ritual: by acquiring the telegraphic skill, I was able to communicate with places near and far. My thoughts could reach the people on the other line. Even though most of the time I communicated arbitrary data, all in declarative mode, I felt a certain exhilaration; I felt free, I felt as if I knew them, the people on the receiving end; as if we were a part of a secret society, no handshakes yet a common sense of belonging, of knowing, of sharing.
The reason why I have decided to share this bit of autobiographical remembrance with all of you, friends and acquaintances, old and new, today, comes from my layman’s understanding of the doings and the undoings of the World Wide Web. Having told you just now of my age, obviously one with the near proximity to a dinosaur from the Jurassic era of technology, you might wonder about my inter/intra- action with this worldly communicator. How does a man my age, how could a man my age talk lightly of the Internet and its crumbling, mischievous, conniving, deviously threatening effects on literature as we like to see it: a beautifully creative art of freeing the mind, the body, the heart from all inhibitors, manly or manmade? We, men settled comfortably in the eight decade of our fruitful lives, tend to like the stability of our immediate worlds: we cherish the tactility of our surroundings. We like our books with covers we can see, with pages we can smell, with publishing rights we can attest to. We like things ‘bound’: to our sense of what is real, what is factual, what is factually created. All at an arm’s (or leg’s) length.
However, when my granddaughter went away for her studies, my wife and I depended largely on the powers of the same ‘worldly signifier’, the Internet. ‘It’ brought us news on daily basis; for the first time in a long time, we felt as if she were here, with us, sharing her thoughts, her struggles, her hopes. Day in and day out. So when she came back for the summer, and we sat down to talk and discuss the course of her work, I became that boy again, one from 60 years ago, eager to comprehend how she trusted this web. I heard of ‘websites’, ‘servers’, ‘chat rooms’, ‘virtual forums’, ‘virtual identities’, ‘chat lists’, ‘links’, ‘hypertextuality’ ‘hyperbooks’ or ‘ebooks’, all seemingly familiar words of a despairingly distant lexicon. She spoke of it with such ease and such vigor that I couldn’t help but question my up-to-then stoic view of a literary work. Poststuructuralism, postmodernism, postconceptualism, post-all late 20th century aside, I saw her enthusiasm for the possibilities of the Net not too dissimilar to my own enthusiasm for the monster telegraph, or the phone for that matter. Who would have thought that I now use a cell phone, no visible cords, wires, ‘bounds’ around.
I sat down and as most men my age, analyzed my new found trust/faith in the Internet’s creative powers. What made, what makes this too complicated for my understanding power system so ‘approachable’, what is it about this virtual fishing net that attracts millions of trout as we speak? What if any is there about this magnanimous mechanism that creates such a creatively zealous following? Is there really a creative side to its autonomous almost too plastic versatility? Does it ‘breathe’ art? Does it ‘give life’ to a meaningful story? As I look back on my countless encounters with the telegraph, I can begin to sense the viability of my granddaughter’s and countless other, young and older followers, enthusiasm for the prospects of the Web’s beneficial nature. Yet, their society is a rather public one; the only handshake is the ability to ‘connect’, to ‘stay online’. Thus, they create and recreate, assemble and reassemble units that no longer belong to them, but are a part of the whole that is never truly there. They sit in virtual cafes, drink virtual spirits, share a virtual present, but the stories they partake on are far from virtual; they are not unlike the ones we so painstakingly bind in tactile covers. They are the tales of their multifaceted lives; the stories of how they are, what they see, why they feel the way they do. Why they are angry at our prehistoric notions of ‘author’, ‘subject’, ‘work’, ‘self’.
Of course, there is the question of theft, of a real threat coming from a virtual source. The daily print is filled with stories of such incredulous frauds; people’s lifework gone in a matter of seconds, not to be retrieved. But then again, it was a human hand that reached for the virtually preserved art work, the same way another human hand (or hands) plagiarized someone’s yet to be ‘bound’ novel, collection of poems, or a handful of essays.
I can’t say that I am a full-fledged convert; I do have a slew of reservations as far as the Web is concerned. And my age is the least of my ‘virtual concerns’. But then again, what is the use of our words, our thoughts, our senses if they cannot reach other people, near and far, creating a society of diversity, of friction, of exchange, virtually transmitted yet quite real communication between us and them, me and you, one and all? Being a writer whose vessel of language is a rather limiting one, I must say that I welcome the linguistic equivocality of the Internet as a good step towards the creation of such a society of amongst other literary peers. A truly good start.
Subscribe