Since 2005, François Bon, who began his literary career in the 1980s as a novelist, has gradually shifted the focus of his work onto his now all-encompassing web-based literary and multimedia oeuvre, tierslivre.net. As part of this transition from paper to web, Bon returned to his printed books to showcase them digitally. Most notably, in 2010 he undertook to retype his second novel, Limite (1985), to publish it in the form of a blog, prefacing each passage with an autobiographical and critical commentary. Once completed, he reedited the full commented text as an e-book. This article argues that even though all three versions have the same narrative at their core, each stage of this project offers something different to the reader and suggests a different focus and conception of literature. Together they illustrate that the shifts between media change the reading experience even without exploiting much of the potential for hyperlinking and interactivity, and that before and beyond all the possible narrative experiments it enables, the digital transition means for literature a move away from the logic of the book towards the 'logic of the project'.
Social networks have changed our relationship to the world wide web and the ways in which we communicate. This applies to the relationship between authors and readers and affects the ways in which authors can and need to be present in the public sphere and enact their authorship. Digital authors experience this particularly acutely, and the present article proposes an overview of the three main types of attitude they have chosen facing the largest social network, Facebook: using, refusing and abusing, each presented through a case study. François Bon embraces the platform and encourages authors to take advantage of the tools it offers in order to reach readers, network with authors, and become independent of traditional infrastructures. After years of almost addictive use, Neil Jomunsi came to quit the network and explained his decision, but also the dilemma upon his return, until eventually leaving again. Jean-Pierre Balpe’s ‘digital installation’ ‘Un Monde Uncertain’, finally, abuses the website by circumventing its terms and conditions and animating a series of fictional author profiles whose Facebook statuses are created by Balpe’s text generator software. Each of the three approaches represents a different response to the constraints and opportunities offered by the social network in light of the author’s situation, their political stance regarding Facebook, and objectives as an author.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.