Is technology blurring the lines of traditional authorship?

If you picked up a book, an article or a research paper before online activity became really popular; then, you remember letting the author of that work take your hand and guide you through the material. It seems the digital age has altered authorship in ways that are not fully understood yet and modified the traditional lines between authors and readers.

Adlington and Feez suggest that new technological resources (known as techno-semiotic) such as tags and comments allow users traditionally known as readers to add meaning to posted literary work.  

Tags. Tags help authors categorize their blog, when searching a database, these are the keywords that help a reader locate the information. In the case of specialized subjects, as we learned last week, a medical student might look for the Latin word for a term instead of the English word to get to more authoritative material. Blogs are tagged, or tied, to certain words during searches, but the reader’s ability to add tags means the readers can link the blog to different words and change what subjects the blog is combined with.

Comments. Traditionally, the thoughts or the interpretation of reader “A” could not be communicated directly to the author. Now, not only can reader “B” also communicate with the author, but also has direct access to the input reader "A" communicated to the author. Technology enables these instantaneous new ways and more clearly shows why the lines between author and reader seem blurred. The author cannot control if the reader goes directly to the comments and how that modifies the author’s work.

Besides blogs, we also were introduced to retweeting, this would be a new way of quoting someone else. I do not have a tweeter account but at this point I do see how a person retweeting something becomes somewhat of an author. Traditionally, when we quote someone is because we believe the source is valid and should be trusted. In a way, we are giving more validity, or at least a louder voice, to the original digital source, or tweet.

Hyperlinks allow a reader to easily and instantaneously access a different text and the authors can no longer guide the reader through the material, the reader can move across contents as they best see fit.

I see a problem where Adlington and Feez directly tie traditional authorship to blogs. Blogs are not traditional to begin with, blogs do provide fast communication between author and readers and across readers. I also see comments as a faster means of communication that existed before, a book review, a librarian’s opinion or a comment from a friend affects what we read, or possibly, even how we perceive the information. Quoting a source also gave, or at least promoted, someone else ideas, or point of view. Traditionally, if a writer referenced another source at some point in their text (like hyperlinks), the reader could have chosen to ask the librarian for that other source and forget the first reader completely; but there is no arguing that the hyperlink makes that option way faster.

Do you agree with Adlington and Feez in their point of view about the difference in traditional authorship and how the lines are blurred, or do you see the techno-semiotic resources as sped-up processes that existed in traditional authorship?

 

Rachael Adlington, S. F. (2019). Reading, writing and co-authorship in blogs. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 42(1).