The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts

In this heady glimpse at an electronic universe, UCLA English professor Lanham contends that the digitized text of the computer screen offers a richer, more complex perceptual field than the printed book. He further claims that interactive electronic text creates a playful, creative medium akin to the rhetoric of the ancient Greeks. In Lanham's scenario, rhetoric was an open-ended pattern of Western education that was supplanted by Newtonian thought and the printed book. These academic essays grandiosely maintain that digitized technology can democratize higher education, open up the arts to a full range of human talent and foster a convergence between the ``two cultures'' of science and the humanities. Lanham surveys interactive novels, video-and-text programs for business and government, electronic textbooks and common ground between the computer and the aesthetics of futurism, dada and postmodern visual art. And, yes, the book is available in electronic form; as the first in the Chicago Expanded Book series, there will be a hypertext edition, shipped on 1.4 MB high-density floppy disks ($19.95 *