Confining Words, Expanded Worlds: The Gutenberg Parenthesis
In The Gutenberg Parenthesis , Thomas Pettitt discusses cultural impacts of the printed book as a medium of information enclosure, by contrast, the Internet fractures this paradigm. Texts are loosing stability and becoming more fluid. Pettit argues that within the parenthesis readers and writiers are contained states, whereas, outside the parenthesis production and consumption are opened out in a stage of 'secondary orality'. Each age creates its own modes of confinement and liberation. Pettitt does not propose the supplanting of parenthesis by secondary orality, rather, both states will continue to co-exist. Peter Donaldson responds by addressing how Web-based media amplify texts to enhance understanding. Pettitt comments: “We are approaching pre-Gutenberg, the medieval notion that ... things overlap. The Internet will make us less categorical in the way we perceive the world, make us less panicky, less worried about distinctions between human and divine, human and machine, h