Technology has been looked at as an extension, meaning that its developments aid people in accomplishing tasks in a quicker manner than by hand. Also, it has been seen as a communication device—a way to talk (or type) with people all over the world with a freedom that face to face communication does not allow. Finally, as a simulation, in that people model technology as much as technology models people. By looking at technology one can begin to see the ways it changed the way that a person conceives his or her ‘self.’ It seems as though as soon as technology changes, people have a new and different way to view themselves. This shows us that the trail is still being blazed, and no one is quite sure where it is going to lead.
“Digitalization…has created a new terrain upon which the literary
system will now operate; it is a terrain that reconceives our mental landscape
(both forms of knowledge and modes of apprehension and exchange) in performative
rather than structural terms. What kind of literacy we (re)invent upon that
new terrain is still for us to decide.” (Hesse 32)
The way that the world has been digitized is creating new terrain in the same ways in which the airplane changed the entire concept of travel. The digitalization, however, is changing the ways that literature works and the ways in which people reflect on the idea of the self. As our relationship to machines evolves, the way in which we relate to the world and our representation of that will change. Technology has caused us to reconceive our mental landscape and stretch the possibilities that we thought existed.