Diigo and TagCrowd and Hypertext, Oh My!

So I was poking around the internet again this morning and I came across another interesting blog, WRT: Writer Response Theory, “a blog and podcast dedicated to discussing text art forms.” (http://writerresponsetheory.org). Including some posts I found about hypertext literature and some crazy stuff called “Literatronica” and “Diigo Fiction.” I was intrigued. I’ve sort of heard of hypertext writing but I don’t really know much about it, generally preferring something I can literally snuggle up with, but hey, I guess I’m sort of self-educating myself about internet literary happenings etc and I should give it a look.

Although I’ll admit I’m a bit intimidated by some of this high-tech literature/ literary techniques, it’s also really exciting stuff. One of the first things I saw when I happened upon the site was this quote: “Let us write stories in the margins of the Web: The web is becoming ours to write with.” This sort of feeling/idea makes me really excited to be a writer at this time in history, with this whole new writing world opening up and all these new options that never existed, like, a mere decade ago. I don’t know if this is really the kind of stuff I want to pursue in my own writing, but, like I said, it’s really cool.

In addition to discussing internet lit and text art, this site offers some really neat links, like TagCrowd.com. The internet can do so many awesome things! One of the other things discussed on the blog was the potential of the internet as a sharing tool, and things like “Social bookmarking.” You have to check out this site and all the links! The most recent post (9 February) talks a lot about marginalia/writing from the margins, and using the internet to do some in the contemporary era. I went to the Diigo site (http://diigo.com/) and found it pretty cool too.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that it’s really awesome how writers are using the internet to update/reinvent the craft. Sites like Diigo almost make the internet into a giant notebook, even providing virtual “Sticky notes.” Writers are no longer limited by the communities they live in for support/feedback/etc, and lucky for me because I live in the middle-of-nowhere Ohio. I’m getting really excited about this stuff the more I think about it, but alas, back to work!