{"id":1676,"date":"2009-06-10T21:39:26","date_gmt":"2009-06-11T04:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2009\/06\/sterling-says-contemporary-literature-not-confronting-issues-of-general-urgency\/"},"modified":"2009-06-10T21:40:47","modified_gmt":"2009-06-11T04:40:47","slug":"sterling-says-contemporary-literature-not-confronting-issues-of-general-urgency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2009\/06\/10\/sterling-says-contemporary-literature-not-confronting-issues-of-general-urgency\/","title":{"rendered":"Sterling says, &#8220;Contemporary literature not confronting issues of general urgency&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/beyond_the_beyond\/2009\/05\/eighteen-challenges-in-contemporary-literature\" target=\"_blank\">from Bruce Sterling&#8217;s BEYOND THE BEYOND @ WIRED.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Arial; line-height: normal; color: #333333; font-size: 14px\"><\/span><\/p>\n<h1 style=\"font-family: Georgia, 'times new roman', serif; line-height: 1.3; color: #333333; font-weight: normal; font-size: 1.7em; padding: 0px; margin: 0px\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/beyond_the_beyond\/wp-content\/themes\/wired\/images\/hed.gif\" border=\"0\" width=\"450\" height=\"67\" \/><\/span><\/h1>\n<p>Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature<\/p>\n<p class=\"entryDescription\" style=\"padding-top: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 0.85em; margin: 0px\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px\">\n<li class=\"entryAuthor\" style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; display: inline; list-style-type: none; padding: 0px\">By Bruce Sterling<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"entry\" style=\"line-height: 1.4; padding: 0px; margin: 0px\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px\">1. Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is globalizing and polyglot.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px\">2. Vernacular means of everyday communication \u2014 cellphones, social networks, streaming video \u2014 are moving into areas where printed text cannot follow.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px\">3. Intellectual property systems failing.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px\">4. Means of book promotion, distribution and retail destabilized.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px\">5. Ink-on-paper manufacturing is an outmoded, toxic industry with steeply rising costs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px\">6. Core demographic for printed media is aging faster than the general population. Failure of print and newspapers is disenfranching young apprentice writers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px\">7. Media conglomerates have poor business model; economically rationalized \u201cculture industry\u201d is actively hostile to vital aspects of humane culture.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px\">8. Long tail balkanizes audiences, disrupts means of canon-building and fragments literary reputation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px\">9. Digital public-domain transforms traditional literary heritage into a huge, cost-free, portable, searchable database, radically transforming the reader\u2019s relationship to belle-lettres.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px\">10. Contemporary literature not confronting issues of general urgency; dominant best-sellers are in former niche genres such as fantasies, romances and teen books.<\/p>\n<p>[ <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/beyond_the_beyond\/2009\/05\/eighteen-challenges-in-contemporary-literature\" target=\"_blank\">click to continue reading at WIRED.com<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from Bruce Sterling&#8217;s BEYOND THE BEYOND @ WIRED.com Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature &nbsp; By Bruce Sterling &nbsp; 1. Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is globalizing and polyglot. 2. Vernacular means of everyday communication \u2014 cellphones, social networks, streaming video \u2014 are moving into areas where printed text cannot follow. 3. Intellectual property [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}