For this writing project, the text/site that I have decided to critically evaluate is facebook. Facebook is an online social network that some people consider to be a form of electronic literature while others believe that it cannot be considered a form of electronic literature. Facebook is something that many people use to communicate with other people and find out information about them.
I believe that facebook can be considered a legitimate piece of literature. People can write their own stories on other people’s profiles, write information about themselves on their own profiles, and do many other things that I believe can be considered a form of literature. The conversations that people have with each other can be read by others and are sort of like their own little short stories. I believe that literature is something that a person begins reading and gets lost in that piece of work, sometimes even spending hours reading the text. Facebook is a place where so many people get lost in the text that they are reading. In my own experiences with facebook, reading one thing often leads to me reading other things that have to do with what I previously read and I continue to read and get lost in the text. To me, this is what literature is really about. Literature should not be about where a certain text is found or what it is about. It should be about the effects that it has on people when they read it. Many people would consider writing letters to other people and posting texts up on bulletin boards legitimate pieces of literature so I do not understand why some people believe that facebook cannot be considered a legitimate form of literature. Facebook is just like writing letters to other people and posting texts up on bulletin boards. It is just a more modern way of producing texts and communicating with other people.
N. Katherine Hayles would agree with my argument that facebook can be considered a legitimate piece of literature. In her book, Writing Machines, she talks about how the technological world and all of its advances have affected reading, writing, and literature. She believes that these changes in the technological world and the world of literature are good changes. What you use to read and write should not be what determines if something can or cannot be considered a legitimate form of literature. The only thing should be able to determine whether a text can or cannot be considered legitimate is the content within the text itself.
One objection to my argument that I could anticipate is that facebook should not be considered a legitimate piece of literature because it takes away from the amount of privacy that many people consider to be an important part of reading and writing. Almost everything that is posted on facebook is available for almost any person using facebook to read. Birkerts would argue that reading and writing should be private and personal actions.
