1) The Importance of Authorship Changes with Time
The time of the epic (Iliad, Odyssey, Beowulf) puts no emphasis on the author, stories passed down orally, the credit goes to the first one to record it, even though they did not write it originally. The true author is ananymousThen after the middle ages people use author as self contained validation based on the acclaim of a famous thinker. For example "Aristotle tells us...." Then in the 17th and 18th century there was a democratization of the author where the prestige is in the text and not the author. For the first time anyone can become a great author if they produce a great text. For example Einstein's ground breaking theory of relativity comes from a patent clerk, but the work speaks for itself.
2) The author in literature
Barthes: The destruction of the author comes naturally from simply writing. The reader always projects meaning subjectively. Who is really speaking?-->Identity loss Attempts to locate author through biography futile, "text speaks not the author"
Foucault: presupposes that the author is gone in order to examine the empty space left behind. In the future it won't matter where the text came from as readers dispel assumptions about the origins about the time, place and person that created a text. The text will be able to stand alone.
3) The author in new media (Manovich)
In the information/internet era there is a plethora of new modes the destroy authorship
a) collaboration and specialization: many works online require multiple authors for formatting, programing, graphic designing, actual writing, etc.
b) interactive works: the reader or user has new levels of input in new media. For instance digital poems where the user controls the progression of the work or games where the soft wear to create new levels.
c) online "menus" and authorship by selection. Connection back to Barthes concept of a text as merely a tissue of quotation--> impossibility of originality
d) the computer itself as an author: create formulas where a computer program generates original texts. Who is the author? The programmer? The computer? Both?
e) remixing and sampling: usually confined to music, but also applies to other new media works where certain programs or images or formats or whatever are taken off the internet and used in new works. Is this plagiarism? There is less stigma attached to stealing intellectual property on line. New media era's emphasis on sharing soft wear, programs, formulas, etc.
Conclusion: The death of the author is nothing new, but the internet has created many new ways of dissecting authorship and empowering the reader/user as the author/creator or at least a collaborator.
