Title

Remediating the Magic Kingdom: Notes Toward a Poetics of Technology

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2008

Publication Title

Currents in Electronic Literacy

Keywords

Poets, Magic Kingdom, technology, production, distribution, consumption

ISSN

1524-6493

Issue/No.

8

Abstract

  1. In this essay, I will address the imagined technologies within and the existing technologies surrounding Cory Doctorow's sci-fi novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (DOMK ). DOMK takes place at a Disney theme park in a future where capitalism has been replaced by a reputation economy, death has been rendered obsolete by cloning technologies, and civic decisions are made by amorphous "ad-hocracies." These themes are neither new to sci-fi literature nor central to my discussion, however. By looking at DOMK 's technological context and its articulation of what Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin have termed the "double logic of remediation," I hope to suggest ways in which a critical awareness of literature and of technology can be collectively pursued to further what might be called a poetics of technology .

Comments

  1. In this essay, I will address the imagined technologies within and the existing technologies surrounding Cory Doctorow's sci-fi novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (DOMK ). DOMK takes place at a Disney theme park in a future where capitalism has been replaced by a reputation economy, death has been rendered obsolete by cloning technologies, and civic decisions are made by amorphous "ad-hocracies." These themes are neither new to sci-fi literature nor central to my discussion, however. By looking at DOMK 's technological context and its articulation of what Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin have termed the "double logic of remediation," I hope to suggest ways in which a critical awareness of literature and of technology can be collectively pursued to further what might be called a poetics of technology .

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