Are we denying the incoming ascendancy of hypertext and new-media

>>9863093
Hypertexts are interesting, but belong in the ludonarrative category with sculpture and video games.

>>9863093
This is the introduction of Lyotard's "The Differend" from 1983. I posted it a few days ago, didn't get much discussion, but I think it's a relevant topic to bring up.

"So. in the next century there will be no more books. It takes too long to read, when success comes from gaining time. What will be called a book will be a printed object whose "message" (its information content) and name and title will first have been broadcast by the media, a film, a newspaper interview, a television program, and a cassette recording. It will be an object from whose sales the publisher (who will also have produced the film, the interview, the program, etc.) will obtain a certain profit margin, because people will think that they must "have" it (and therefore buy it) so as not to be taken for idiots or to break (my goodness) the social bond! The book will be distributed at a premium, yielding a financial profit for the publisher and a symbolic one for the reader."

>"Philosophers have never had instituted addressees, which is nothing new. The reflection's destination is also an object of reflection. The last of last year's line has been around a long time. So has solitude. Still there is something new: the relation to time (I am tempted to write the "use of time") that reigns today in the "public space." Reflection is not thrust aside today because it is dangerous or up- setting, but simply because it is a waste of time. It is "good for nothing," it is not good for gaining time. For success is gaining time. A book, for example, is a success if its first printing is rapidly sold out. This finality is the finality of the economic genre. Philosophy has been able to publish its reflections under the guise of many genres (artistic, political, theological, scientific, anthropological), at the price, of course, of misunderstandings and grave wrongs, but still.... whereas economic calculation seems fatal to it.The differend does not bear upon the content of the reflection. It concerns (and tampers with) its ultimate presuppositions. Reflection requires that you watch out for occurrences, that you don't already know what's happening. It leaves open the question: Is it happening ? It tries to keep up with the now (a belabored word). In the economic genre, the rule is that what happens can happen only if it has already been paid back, and therefore has already happened. Exchange presupposes that the cession is canceled in advance by a counter-cession, the circulation of the book being canceled by its sales. And the sooner this is done, the better the book is."

>>9863093
Renaud Camus has been writing Vaisseaux Brûlés, an enormous work made of hypertext links, since 1998 on his website.

>>9863130
(He has published like 100 paper books in the meantime.)

>>9863108

I don't really understand. Is Lyotard saying that books will become a symbol for a purely arbitrary social commodity?

>>9863108
Yeah but that's not art, that's just a product. I stand in disagreement with anyone who says something like that is the future of literature, because I disagree that such a thing could be called literature at all.

>>9863173
What I gather from it, is that the speed of new media, and it's over-abundance, crowd out the time required for long form literature. People will still write such things, but the majority of people interested will not read the whole thing. They'll look for an expert opinion, a synopsis, a review. They'll like the book, without ever reading it.

Lyotard wrote that passage in 1983, but fuck me if it doesn't seem extremely pertinent to today's literary world. Thinker's like Zizek, Peterson, Houellebecq, even writer's like Stephen King and Neil Gaiman, have a much wider audience than actual readership, because they condense their writing into a video/lecture format.

Think about the way books like Pikety's Capital, or The Bell Curve, or even The Art of the Deal, become short hand for certain philosophical outlooks, even for people who will never read these texts.

>>9863099
>ludonarrative

Hadn't come across this term before, reading the wikipedia article:

>Hocking coined the term in response to the game BioShock, which according to him promotes the theme of self-interest through its gameplay while promoting the opposing theme of selflessness through its narrative, creating a violation of aesthetic distance that often pulls the player out of the game. Video game theorist Tom Bissell, in his book Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter (2010), notes the example of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, where a player can all but kill their digital partner during gameplay without upsetting the built-in narrative of the game.

That's an interesting criticism. Does the specific rules of a specific game match the specific narrative? I don't see why a question like that is only asked of video games, obviously books are a game of sorts, with different genre's having different rules.

How does the linear, building, growing format of a typical philosophical text relate to it's ideological argument? I'm immediately thinking of books like A Thousand Plateaus or The Naked Lunch in which the author's suggest the pages could be read out of order. These texts have a tendency to dissolve into themselves, that matches the author's fragmentary philosophy.

To return to OP's questions, Is the linear format of the classical novel applicable to the stories we will tell today and tomorrow?