Important Developments

A message to the Narrative-L:

About a year ago I was asked to give a lecture on "The Future of Theory." Which in practice means "important developments in theory in the recent past."

I have my own ideas and prejudices, of course, but am also aware of my limitations, and would be grateful for any input from this listserv, which I will be delighted to acknowledge in the published version of the talk. (If you want to toot your own horn, that's okay, and those who would prefer for any reason to message me privately should respond to [e-mail].) Thanks,
 David Richter

—and my answer:

Hi,

Any discussion of the future of theory would have to acknowledge, I think, the major paradigm shift of recent years, well, decades, with the oncoming of Internet, Google, instant information, blogs, the World Wide Web 2.0— technoliteracy, instant worldwide dialogue (which remains), distribution lists, social networking, book phasing—and the Gutenberg Galaxy going nova with this new dimension of textuality. Well now that I think of it some things have been long prefigured (by McLuhan, Barthes et al.) and others are more recent and may well be undertheorized, linkterature for instance, or the visibility of small literary niches in the long tail.... whatever that may be... or searchability—search me... Whatever you write on, don't leave cyberNethics out of the discussion!

Jose Angel Garcia Landa
http://www.garcialanda.net

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