Eliteriture

“The essay speaks its own voice, linking almost only to itself, always beside the poems it speaks of. You may hear voices of theorists behind these words, but they are implicit, a background rather than names to be paraded. The essay is brief and impressionistic and is not meant to be analytically exhaustive. Don't worry about what order to read this in, or about reading all of it. You'll find that the essay loops around itself, much as the poem it describes loops around its hub. When you're tired of the looping, you've probably read enough.”—Jill Walker

Eliterature is another electronic zine that offers links to many works of hypertext and interactive fiction, poetry, drama, animated text, and also non-fiction works presented in various on-line formats. There is much resemblance between the non-fiction areas of this site and the theory areas of net.art exhibitions. Many of the non-fiction pieces often put the subject matter of what is referred to into practice either conceptually or visually, and it is becoming more and more mainstream to use the flexibility of on-line writing to express ideas in experimental (and often very effective) ways. The medium of the net allows one to give an on-line lecture of sorts complete with built in audio/visual aides. Moreover, experimental linking structures and interactivity go even further to add to the expression of thought and meaning. It is more than just a new way of thinking that is possible within this medium, but a new way of thought transmission as well. One can demonstrate a point while referring to it in such a way as never before possible in past mediums. The perception of the reader can be manipulated in ways similar to programming a browser. In this way, readers are being trained to think in ways that are similar to the organization of data that computers use. One might ask whether we are programming computers or if they are programming us. The argument could be made that we are really reprogramming each other since computers do not actually program (at least not to any significant extent just yet), but it is really the mechanical operation of data processing within the limitations of present electronic devices that is creating a ‘program’ of sorts.
This can be seen in the way in which ezines differ from their off-line printed counterparts. Printed zines could be read in a strictly linear fashion similar to a book (or comic book), although one could peruse them in a random fashion that resembles the action of hypertext. But electronic hypertext lends itself to having a more intended design by the author of the work. For example, Attributed Text, by Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead, presents itself as a hypertexted sentence about intellectual property. Each word then links to a paragraph or two that subverts the main idea by presenting another persons text. Yet in doing so, it keeps the original statement always in view. It is a very clever way of demonstrating how the Internet negates and renders obsolete many traditional ideas concerning intellectual property. Of course, this entire piece can be linked to or appropriated as well, further demonstrating this principle. This type of thinking is becoming more and more commonplace in the literature of ezines.