Terrell Neuage Masters Thesis

Conclusion

Though it is beyond the scope of this thesis, one could relate the pattern-defining abilities of the brain to adapt, change, and link to the rise of the World Wide Web. Everyday thinking is equivalent to the narrative, which will be redefined because of the use of the Internet. The thought processes we encounter within ourselves involve transferring from node to node. For example, as a parent, student, artist, photographer, bodybuilder, astrologer, writer, and participant in society, I may shift from thoughts about my children's activities to my girlfriend, studies, bodybuilding, or the correct birth time for Princess Diana (2:15 PM or 7:45 PM?), among countless other topics. Society is a linking process, and a society's narrative, to be true, is one of linked nodes.

The narrative we experience within ourselves and through reading or communication is now part of a global syntax. Literature can no longer remain solely a story produced by traditional printing methods. Literature will become reader-driven as the witness-consumer-creator produces and consumes a new type of narrative. The narrative of the 21st century will weave the world's voices, linking within and without, providing continuous new structures and literature unknown before this time.

"In considering transitions of organs, it is so important to bear in mind the probability of conversion from one function to another." (Darwin, p. 45)

The Internet provides, for the first time in recorded history, a world literature. Over recent decades, there has been a growing consciousness of the world as one family, with the interconnectedness of all life as a constant theme. World literature is now easily accessible through the Internet. A project of a world story created online, involving people from diverse cultural backgrounds across countries, would produce a text with meanings ascribed by both readers and writers.

The story is no longer merely about what has happened to men and women and how they responded; instead, it is about how the subjective and collective meanings of women and men as categories of identity have been constructed (Scott, p.6).

All forms of literature—drama, epic, essay, novel, poetry, short story, plays—and movements such as imagism, romanticism, and surrealism, along with national literatures like American, Catalan, English, and German, have become widely available through printed texts and are now popular worldwide via the Internet across every imaginable genre.

The Internet was designed to be indestructible, conceived by the American government to survive nuclear war, asteroid impacts, or other catastrophic events. It embodies a response to prophecies of the past two millennia about the end of the twentieth century, ensuring communication persists even if destructive predictions come true.

The collective memory of humanity recalls the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in 641, where a thousand years of scholarly work was lost. Now, we have a means to preserve the world's knowledge, regardless of nuclear war, natural disasters, global warming, or collisions with space rocks. Human knowledge will survive humanity, though future generations will need to decode the narratives they find.

Books will not lose their place, but the reader's role will transform. Books will undergo reinterpretation and presentation, as literature always has. Biblical scholar Stephen Prickett notes in his Origins of Narrative:

During the late eighteenth century, the Bible underwent a shift in interpretation so radical as to make it virtually a different book from what it had been a hundred years earlier... far from being divinely inspired or a rock of certainty, its text was neither stable nor original, becoming a paradigm of all literature as a cultural artifact. (Prickett, 1996)

Just as Prickett describes a shift in reading the Bible, there is now a shift in reading the universe (Prickett, 1996, p.155). Our engagement with narrative via the World Wide Web represents a shift in narrative exchange.

The Internet introduces new writings from both emerging and established authors. For example, a novelist could share their first chapter online, allowing readers to purchase the remainder electronically or download and print it themselves.

Multimedia is transforming how narratives are presented. Readers must evaluate material on the World Wide Web and develop critical skills to assign meaning. With web page editors, anyone can self-publish polished, professional-looking sites with minimal effort. As literature on the Web becomes ubiquitous, each reader, as a witness to the narrative, will create a unique perspective on the original creation. The author has not died but has evolved, participating in a true literary exchange.

With the World Wide Web's accessibility, the individual writer-poet-hero's singular voice will no longer dominate. There will never again be another Roland Barthes, Wordsworth, Shelley, or Shakespeare. Where once there were few voices, now thousands cry out, each with a unique perspective.

The World Wide Web is a digital speak-easy where literature is experienced as mutating, volatile virtual texts. It reflects the unpredictability of human life, which has faced near-extinction. As narratives merge, link, and interact through the Web, humanity will redefine itself and survive, a feat it might not have accomplished without the Internet.