Reading in the Age of Web 2.0

Abstract

The changing role of the Internet reader from consumer to producer of textual meanings is analyzed in the context of changing attitudes towards authors and literary works.

Notes

1. D Lanir, Vy ne gadzhet: Manifest (Moscow: Astrel'/Corpus, 2011), p. 15 [Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (New York: Vintage Books / Random House, 2011), p. 5.—Trans.].

2. The following are verbatim quotations from posts on various Internet forums, blogs, and literary portals.

* The line is from Kornei Chukovskii's poem about the talking washstand, Moidodyr, who at this point in the poem is praising a grubby little boy for having cleaned up well.—Trans.

* Misery is actually the name of the recurring heroine (Misery Chastain) in the books written by the fictional author in King's novel. The name of the fervent fan obsessed with the fate of Misery is Annie Wilkes.—Editor.

* The language “of the padonki,” a deliberate misspelling that imitates the way podonki, “the dregs,” sounds; “padonkaff” is, in turn, a “creative” spelling of podonkov, “belonging to the podonki.”—Trans.

* A deliberate misspelling of the loan-word kreativ, which had originally been adopted to distinguish between commercial and non-commercial creative output—Trans.

** Albanskii iazyk, “Albanian language,” a blanket term for any kind of nonstandard use of language—Trans.

3. Lanir, Vy ne gadzhet, p. 39 [p. 20].

4. Lanir, Vy ne gadzhet, p. 52 [p. 28].