Welcome to DTC 375, Language, Texts, and Technology. In this class we will explore three related questions:

1. In what ways is the conception, development, distribution and interpretation of a text influenced by the technologies through which that text is created, accessed, and perceived?
2. Is the writing and reading of digital texts significantly different from that of earlier textual forms and, if so, how?
3. How do digital technologies complicate our understanding of terms such as writing, reading, text, and texts.

The rapid proliferation and diversification of digital communication technologies over the past few decades have made these questions vitally important. Artists, scholars, and professionals in all fields are working to find innovative and effective ways to engage with the affordances and challenges of digital media. This form of writing/making is still so new that a standard set of conventions and rules has yet to be developed. Experimentation, therefore, remains at least as important to finding answers to our questions as scholarly research. This class has been developed accordingly, with an attempt to place equal emphasis on foundational/current theories and experimentation with the creation of digital texts.

We will begin with an overview of the three terms in the course title: language, text, and technology; and examine the influence that each has on the other two. The concepts and vocabulary gained will then be used to examine earlier periods of media upheaval: the invention of writing, the invention of print, and the advent of electronic and digital media. Special attention will be given to developing methods for identifying the affordances and constraints entailed in each medium.

The rest of the semester will be devoted to current and emerging forms of digital texts.  We will use three different authoring tools (iBook Author, Twine, and Inform 7) to experiment with aspects of digital text, with emphases on multimodality, multilinearity, and interaction. Finally, we will look beyond the screen and explore code as a textual and literary form. Throughout the semester you will also keep a journal of responses to readings and discussions.

Of this class’s three core questions, the first is by far the oldest, going back at least as far as Plato. The remaining two are much more recent, but all share in the fact that they still have not been definitively answered. While part of this class will be spent discussing how others have attempted to answer them, the goal of the class is to give you the opportunity to develop your own answers.