Tag Archives: technology

A lot like genre women’s fiction

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From an article on the enduring popularity of serial dramas, published in Drexel University’s online culture magazine, The Smart Set:

A telenovela is all about a couple who wants to kiss and a scriptwriter who stands in their way for 150 episodes.

That’s also the fun of both romance novels and romantic comedies, isn’t it? Although obviously for novels it’s the writer who’s in the way.

The article’s author, Stefany Anne Golberg, also makes an observation about how emerging technologies are changing the way people consume serials:

With the advent of On-Demand viewing like Netflix and Hulu, one is able to watch serials from start to finish without missing a moment. What’s totally different than the video rentals of yore is that you can also watch many episodes in quick succession, just like reading the chapters of a book. In a way, you’re having your cake and eating it, too. Each episode is a complete story and also adds to a greater narrative.

Could this help make serials more popular — by enabling people to sit down with them, as compared to receiving them on someone else’s schedule, by installment?

Will it affect the serial’s form?

[UPDATE: And then one day, I wrote a serial novel…]

Note to future self

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According to an AP story in the LA Times (registration required), handwritten notes are becoming more prized now that so much communication is handled via email.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about a Guardian article that predicted that handwriting as a skill was in danger of being lost.

Perhaps it will be retained by elites as a “medium is the message” flourish to polite society communications. Public schools will drop it, but finishing schools will teach it, as will adult ed classes in the local libraries. If there are . . . libraries . . .

The end of handwriting?

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In The Guardian this week, Stuart Jeffries asks whether writing by hand will become a lost art, as technology increasingly enables us to communicate without it.

He passes on a bit of history along the way. For example, the Sumarian merchants invented a script 5000 years ago, using “a stylus and wet clay to record the ingredients for beer.” Notes Jeffries, “The endlessly inventive outpouring of human writing thus grew out of commercial necessity.”

Perhaps that observation holds the secret to whether handwriting will die. Does it have, today, any commercial necessity?