高英课文Bards Of the Internet.docx

1、高英课文Bards Of the InternetBards Of the InternetByPhilipElmer-DeWitt1. One of the unintended side effects of the invention of the telephone was that writing went out of style. Oh, sure, there were still full-time scribblers - journalists, academics, professional wordsmiths. And the great centers of co

2、mmerce still found it useful to keep on hand people who could draft a memo, a brief, a press release or a contract. But given a choice between picking up a pen or a phone, most folks took the easy route and gave their fingers - and sometimes their mind - a rest.2. Which makes whats happening on the

3、computer networks all the more startling. Every night, when they should be watching television, millions of computer users sit down at their keyboards; dial into CompuServe, Prodigy, America Online or the Internet; and start typing - E-mail, bulletin-board postings, chat messages, rants, diatribes,

4、even short stories and poems. Just when the media of McLuhan were supposed to render obsolete the medium of Shakespeare, the online world is experiencing the greatest boom in letter writing since the 18th century.3. It is my overwhelming belief that E-mail and computer conferencing is teaching an en

5、tire generation about the flexibility and utility of prose, writes Jon Carroll, a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle. Patrick Nielsen Hayden, an editor at Tor Books, compares electronic bulletin boards with the scribblers compacts of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in which members pas

6、sed letters from hand to hand, adding a little more at each turn. David Sewell, an associate editor at the University of Arizona, likens netwriting to the literary scene Mark Twain discovered in San Francisco in the 1860s, when people were reinventing journalism by grafting it onto the tall-tale fol

7、k tradition. Others hark back to Tom Paine and the Revolutionary War pamphleteers, or even to the Elizabethan era, when, thanks to Gutenberg, a generation of English writers became intoxicated with language.4. But such comparisons invite a question: If online writing today represents some sort of re

8、naissance, why is so much of it so awful? For it can be very bad indeed: sloppy, meandering, puerile, ungrammatical, poorly spelled, badly structured and at times virtually content free. HEY 1! reads an all too typical message on the Internet, I THINK METALLICA IZ REEL KOOL DOOD! 15. One reason, of

9、course, is that E-mail is not like ordinary writing. You need to think of this as written speech, says Gerard Van der Leun, a literary agent based in Westport, Connecticut, who has emerged as one of the pre-eminent stylists on the Net. These things are little more considered than coffeehouse talk an

10、d a lot less considered than a letter. Theyre not to have and hold; theyre to fire and forget. Many online postings are composed live with the clock ticking, using rudimentary word processors on computer systems that charge by the minute and in some cases will shut down without warning when an hour

11、runs out6. That is not to say that with more time every writer on the Internet would produce sparkling copy. Much of the fiction and poetry is second-rate or worse, which is not surprising given that the barriers to entry are so low. In the real world, says Mary Anne Mohanraj, a Chicago-based poet,

12、it takes a hell of a lot of work to get published, which naturally weeds out a lot of the garbage. On the Net, just a few keystrokes sends your writing out to thousands of readers.7. But even among the reams of bad poetry, gems are to be found. Mike Godwin, a Washington-based lawyer who posts under

13、the pen name mnemonic, tells the story of Joe Green, a technical writer at Cray Research who turned a moribund discussion group called rec.arts.poems into a real poetry workshop by mercilessly critiquing the pieces he found there. Some people got angry and said if he was such a god of poetry, why di

14、dnt he publish his poems to the group? recalls Godwin. He did, and blew them all away. Greens Well Met in Minnesota, a mock-epic account of a face-to-face meeting with a fellow network scribbler, is now revered on the Internet as a classic. It begins, The truth is that when I met Mark I was dressed

15、as the Canterbury Tales. Rather difficult to do as you might suspect, but I wanted to make a certain impression.8. The more prosaic technical and political discussion groups, meanwhile, have become so crowded with writers crying for attention that a Darwinian survival principle has started to prevai

16、l. Its so competitive that you have to work on your style if you want to make any impact, says Jorn Barger, a software designer in Chicago. Good writing on the Net tends to be clear, vigorous, witty and above all brief. The medium favors the terse, says Crawford Kilian, a writing teacher at Capilano

17、 College in Vancouver, British Columbia. Short paragraphs, bulleted lists and one-liners are the units of thought here.9. Some of the most successful netwriting is produced in computer conferences, where writers compose in a kind of collaborative heat, knocking ideas against one another until they s

18、park. Perhaps the best examples of this are found on the WELL, a Sausalito, California, bulletin board favored by journalists. The caliber of discussion is often so high that several publications - including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal - have printed excerpts from the WELL.10. Cur

19、iously, what works on the computer networks isnt necessarily what works on paper. Netwriters freely lace their prose with strange acronyms and smileys, the little faces constructed with punctuation marks and | intended to convey the winks, grins and grimaces of ordinary conversations. Somehow it all

20、 flows together quite smoothly. On the other hand, polished prose copied onto bulletin boards from books and magazines often seems long- winded and phony. Unless they adjust to the new medium, professional writers can come across as self-important blowhards in debates with more nimble networkers. Sa

21、ys Brock Meeks, a Washington-based reporter who covers the online culture for Communications Daily: There are a bunch of hacker kids out there who can string a sentence together better than their blue- blooded peers simply because they log on all the time and write, write, write. 11. There is someth

22、ing inherently democratizing - perhaps even revolutionary - about the technology. Not only has it enfranchised thousands of would-be writers who otherwise might never have taken up the craft, but it has also thrown together classes of people who hadnt had much direct contact before: students, scient

23、ists, senior citizens, computer geeks, grass-roots (and often blue-collar) bulletin-board enthusiasts and most recently the working press.12. Its easy to make this stuff look foolish and trivial, says Tor Books Nielsen Hayden. After all, a lot of everyones daily life is foolish and trivial. I mean,

24、really, smileys? Housewives in Des Moines who log on as VIXEN?13. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the computer-message boards or to underestimate the effect a lifetime of dashing off E-mail will have on a generation of young writers. The computer networks may not be Brook Farm or the Globe Thea

25、tre, but they do represent, for millions of people, a living, breathing life of letters. One suspects that the Bard himself, confronted with the Internet, might have dived right in and never logged off. 1.电话发明的一个意想不到的副作用就是使写作脱离原有的格式（风格）。确实，现在仍有一些全职的三流作家，比如记者，学者，作家。在商业的中心，当人们需要草拟一份备忘录，简介，新闻稿或是合同时，手写仍

26、然有用。但就拿笔或打电话而言，大多数人希望采取简便的方式并让自己的手指放松，有时他们确实这样想。（来源不详） 电话的发明，产生了一个始料不及的后果，书写过时了。诚然，全职的写字工仍然存在，包括记者、学者以及职业写手。大型商业中心仍然很有必要保留一些能草拟备忘录、会议纪要、新闻稿或者合同的人。但是在举笔和拿起话筒之间选择的话，大多数人都会走便道，让手指有时还有大脑休息片刻。（上外课件）2.是什么发生在电脑网络中，让其如此令人吃惊。每个夜晚，当人们在看电视时，数以百万计的电脑用户在他们的键盘前，拨号给CompuServe，Prodigy，美国在线或是互联网，并开始打字，发邮件，发布电子公告，聊天，

27、咆哮，谩骂，甚至写个短故事和诗歌。当麦克卢汉的媒介被认为提出了废弃莎士比亚的媒介时，网上世界却在经历着自18世纪以来在书写格式上最大的剧变。与之相比，当前计算机网络上发生的现象就更为惊人了。每个夜晚，当人们本应该看电视的时候，成千上万的计算机用户坐在键盘前，点击进入“电脑服务”、“奇才”、“美国在线”或互联网，并开始打字 发电子邮件、发布信息、聊天、夸夸其谈、谩骂，甚至创作短篇小说和诗歌。当麦克卢汉所说的媒介正在淘汰莎士比亚时代的媒介时，网络世界正经历着18世纪以来信件书写最为迅猛的发展。3.旧金山记事报的专栏作家，乔恩卡罗尔说，我坚持认为电子邮件和电脑会议技术在散文的适用和实用上影响了整整一

28、代人。由托尔出版公司的编辑，帕特里克尼尔森海登认为，与18世纪末，19世纪初的“作家小彩盒”，每个成员通过手与手之间传递信件，电子公告栏，在每个回合增加了一点。，亚利桑那大学的副主编，大卫休厄尔，把网络作品比作马克吐温在18世纪60年代发现的文学场景，人们正在通过在充满是非的人为传统中移植网络作品，从而重新定义新闻业。回望托马斯潘恩和独立战争的小册子作家们，亦或是伊丽莎白时代，由于古登堡的出现，那个年代的英国作家们开始沉浸于语言的创作中。“我确信电子邮件和网上会议正在教会整整一代人写文章是多么有用，可以灵活到何种程度，”旧金山纪事报的专栏 作家乔恩卡洛尔这样写道。石山图书出版社的编辑帕特里克尼

29、尔森海顿把当今的电子公告板比作18世纪末19世纪初的“文字盒”：这是个小盒子，盒内的文章在多人间传递，每人经 手时都会增加一些句子。来自亚利桑那大学的副主编大卫塞维尔则将网络写作喻为马克吐温在19世纪60年代在旧金山所发现的文学景象，“当时人们将新闻报道嫁接到夸张的民俗传统故事之中，创造了新的新闻报道方式 ”。更有甚者，有人想起了汤姆潘恩和美国革命时期政治小册子作家，甚至还想起了伊丽莎白一世时期，古腾堡活字印刷术的发明，令一代英国作家沉迷在语言之中。4.但是这种比较产生了一个问题。如果网上创作表现出了文艺复兴年代的一些风格，为什么其中的一些会如此糟糕？一些确实很糟：随意，海阔天空，没有语法，错

30、误拼写，结构混乱，有的甚至内容空虚，没有涵义。在网上看到个如此特殊的信息，“HEY1”, “I THINK METALLICA IZ REEL KOOL DOOD! 1 ”可是这种比较又引出一个问题：如果说当今的网络写作代表了某种复兴，但为何这么多网络作品又如此糟糕呢？网络写作可能会低劣不堪：文体拖沓、漫无边际、愚蠢幼稚、不合语法、拼写糟糕、结构不当，有时甚至毫无内容可言，正如网络上典型的短信息所示：“嗨1！我觉得金属乐队酷毙了！1 ”5.当然要提的一个原因是电子邮件不像普通的写作。在康涅狄格州，韦斯特波特工作的文学经纪人，在互联网涌现的著名的文体学家之一的Gerard Van der leu

31、a说，你必须把电子邮件当做是一份书面发言，比咖啡馆谈论多点严肃性，比正式写作少点客套。它们不必是内容丰富，观点充足，应当是值得探讨抨击。一些网上记录用钟表滴答的韵律使其具有灵性，用电脑上基本的词汇处理程序在几分钟内进行加工，当一小时过去，大多数情况下，程序会在没有警告的前提下自动关闭。当然，原因之一就是电子邮件不同于常规写作。“你得把它看成是写下来的话，”康涅狄格州西港镇的文学作品经纪人杰勒德凡德勒恩如是说，此人是最近在网络上窜红的文体家,“这种东西和咖啡屋里的闲谈相差无几，但和书信相差甚远。它们不用储存保留，而是要删除遗忘。”许多网络 公告内设“实况”计时系统，利用计算机系统中基本的文字处理

32、器，这类公告以分钟收费，往往一小时后不给提示就自动关闭。6.这不是说每一个在网上花费大量时间的作家都能写出具有火花的作品。大多数的小说和诗歌是一般的甚至更糟，不必惊奇如此，因为网络进入的门槛很低。Mary Anne Mohanraj，一位土生的芝加哥诗人说，在真实的世界里，一部作品往往花费大量的时间去发布，这自然会淘汰大量的垃圾作品。而在网上，只需点击几个键便可将作品呈现在成千上万的读者面前。这并不是说，所有的网络作家多花一点时间都能生产出惊世之作。网上许多小说和诗歌都属二流水平或者更差，这倒并不足为怪，因为入这行的门槛太低了。“在现实世界中，”芝加哥诗人玛丽安妮穆罕拉吉说，“文学作品要出版，要做非常辛勤的劳动，这自然就剔除了大量的垃圾。而在网络世界，区区几次按键就可以将自己的作品发给成千上万的读者。”7.但在这些大量的糟粕中还有有些精华坐在。Mike Godwin，一位华盛顿土生的律师，用笔名“记忆”写作，讲述了关于Joe Green的故事，一位在Gray研究所的科技作家，通过无情批评团体中的缺点进而将一个名为rec.arts.poems接近破散的讨论团体转变为一个真实的诗