Along the centuries, the role of the author has developed and changed dramatically. Whereas before the invention of the printing, the relevance of the author was minimum -since, among other things, the stories were transmitted orally and therefore there was not a single creator-, the importance of this started to become more important, reaching nowadays’ levels.
However, with the creation of the hypertext, the author’s power is running down. Taking into account that by publishing a document on the internet you make it available to almost anybody, the author loses his mastery of the piece. To this extent, some critics such as Sven Birkerts believe that “electronic text, and hypertext in particular, is killing the author”. Besides, it comes without saying that once something is published on the web, anybody with some basic knowledge of computers can copy and paste the document, becoming copying even easier than before.
In contrast, others believe that hypertext has some advantages for the author as well. For instance, each of the readers is free to select the information that wants to see, not being obliged to see some things that may be considered as a burden. In other words, it provides readers much more opportunities than a normal book, with the result it has on the author.
References:
- María Jesús Lamarca (2009). El autor y la autoría en el mundo digital. Retrieved 26th September, 2009, 19.00 from http://artesadigital.blogspot.com/2009/02/el-autor-y-la-autoria-en-el-mundo.html
- Author. (2009, September 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 05:34, September 4, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Author&oldid=311786491
- Jakob Nielsen. Multimedia and hypertext: the internet and beyond. Published by Morgan Kaufmann. Retrived 20.00, September 26th, 2009 from http://books.google.es/books?id=KgZXCCfP0rQC&pg=PA321&lpg=PA321&dq=the+role+of+the+author+hypertext&source=bl&ots=OEql72JnDp&sig=y4SfNXmAZM0QR_NBVCXqW2gKLcM&hl=es&ei=8le-StfeHseO_Abhy9V1&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#v=onepage&q=the%20role%20of%20the%20author%20hypertext&f=false
- “Hypertext and the role of the reader and writer”. Part of the examination for the doctoral program in English at Michigan State University. Retrieved 20.30 26th September, 2009 from http://faculty.gvsu.edu/patterna/hyperreading.html
