Technology Platforms for 21st Century Literature

The three-day conference, designed to advance agreement on the next steps needed in the development of electronic literary authoring and publishing tools, opens on Wednesday evening with a night of live "futureTEXT" literary performances, hosted by Robert Coover and Robert Arellano of Brown University, and featuring some of the world's leading-edge electronic writers and poets.

On Thursday morning, these works and others will be critically examined and discussed, with appropriate illustrative demos, by the writers themselves, in a session borrowing its title from the oft-quoted line of hyperfiction pioneer Michael Joyce (who will be attending): "There is no simple way to say this." Writers will take us behind the scenes to show us how they do what they do and what they'd like to do if they had the tools to do it with. Writerly habits and relationships to book culture will be explained, complaints aired, problems discussed, aspirations expressed, all as groundwork for the discussions with technologists to follow.

That afternoon, after a "State of the Art" technical overview, provided by Michael Miller, editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, the visiting technologists will present their own performances of "futureTECH," a glimpse into the newest and coming technology for writers, some of it meant to reply to the complaints and hopes of the writers, some meant to surprise them with new possibilities. All materials, creative and technical, will be demo'd on separate workstations that evening at a reception in the Brown University MultiMedia Lab.

On Friday morning, hypertext pioneer and theories Jay David Bolter from Georgia University of Technology will attempt a summary of the previous two days' events, "The Story So Far," followed by an open roundtable discussion between all participants, "What Happens Next." Friday afternoon has been reserved for workshops, demos, and other presentations that emerge from the first two days of activities.