The near-death of the author : creativity in the internet age

In the modern world of networked digital media, authors must navigate many challenges. Most pressingly, the illegal downloading and streaming of copyright material on the internet deprives authors of royalties, and in some cases it has discouraged creativity or terminated careers. Exploring technologys impact on the status and idea of authorship in todays world, The Near-Death of the Author reveals the many obstacles facing contemporary authors. John Potts details how the online culture of remix and creative reuse operates in a post-authorship mode, with little regard for individual authorship. The book explores how developments in algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) have yielded novels, newspaper articles, musical works, films, and paintings without the need of human authors or artists. It also examines how these AI achievements have provoked questions regarding the authorship of new works, such as Does the author need to be human? And, more alarmingly, Is there even a need for human authors? Providing suggestions on how contemporary authors can endure in the world of data, the book ultimately concludes that network culture has provoked the near -death, but not the death , of the author. "The digital age contains many challenges to the contemporary author. The illegal transmission of copyright material on the internet deprives authors of royalties, and in some cases has terminated careers. Electronic artworks perform dynamic or 'big data' writing, in which an algorithm generates constant new text drawn from an enormous database: here there is no author, only an algorithm. Developments in Artificial Intelligence have yielded novels, musical works, films, and paintings produced not by authors or artists but by AI. The internet also accommodates collective writing (Wikipedia), multiple and ongoing authoring (remix culture, creative re-use and open source), anonymous blogging, and 'transformative' writing or fan fiction based on copyrighted works. These practices coalesce to form a challenge to notions of the author in the most recent chapter of the history of authorship. The Near-Death of the Author: Authorship in the Internet Age includes a history of authorship, tracing the changes in the status of the author from ancient cultures to the present. The book proposes that if there is a contemporary threat to the social role of the author, it derives not from the post-structuralist theory of Roland Barthes in 'The Death of the Author', but from the disruptive practices associated with the internet and digital technology. These practices include: the illegal downloading and streaming of copyright material; the unlicensed use and re-use of authors' works; collective authorship and 'transformative' practices such as fan fiction; works created by AI; and author-as-algorithm artworks. To broaden the scope of authorship, this book discusses not only the literary author but also the filmmaker, composer, songwriter, choreographer, visual artist, designer: all creators of original works protected by copyright. In the internet age, all that is solid melts into data; this book considers whether the author itself will melt away, or survive in altered form."-- Provided by publisher