Electric amateurs: literary encounters with computing technologies 1987-2001
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Date
02/07/2015Author
Butchard, Dorothy Keziah
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Abstract
This thesis considers the portrayal of uncertain or amateur encounters with new
technologies in the late twentieth century. Focusing on fictional responses to the
incipient technological and cultural changes wrought by the rise of the personal
computer, I demonstrate how authors during this period drew on experiences of
empowerment and uncertainty to convey the impact of a period of intense
technological transition. From the increasing availability of word processing
software in the 1980s to the exponential popularity of the “World Wide Web”, I
explore how perceptions of an “information revolution” tended to emphasise the
increasing speed, ease and expansiveness of global communications, while more
doubtful commentators expressed anxieties about the pace and effects of
technological change. Critical approaches to the cultural impact of computing
technologies have tended to overlook the role played by perceptions of expertise
and familiarity, and my thesis seeks to redress this by identifying a broad range of
imagery, language and cultural references used to depict amateur or inexpert
encounters with computing technologies.
My interest in literary representations of amateur or marginalised users of
computing technology reveals how the ease and speed of reading and writing
promised by technological expertise can be countered by uncertainty arising from
limited understanding of the complex processes involved. In a pre-smartphone
age, the computer loomed as an object which was simultaneously baffling and
enchanting, filled with potential but also obscure in its fundamental workings.
Examining instances within experimental literary fiction and poetry which
portray, imply, or respond to, encounters with personal computing, I demonstrate
how individuals’ attempts to understand a technologically-inflected world can be
described and enacted by the use of unusual narrative and poetic devices, where
experimental literary strategies work to recreate the complex sensations associated
with thrilling, difficult, or incomprehensible aspects of information technologies.