‘Lethargy arises not just from exhaustion or being ill at ease, but also because digital platforms specify that only certain forms of interaction – most obviously interactions that generate value – count as ‘being yourself’’. (Hu 35)
Welcome to the Digital Experience…
Section 4: Contemporary Digital Writing and Algorithmic Reading
This is the Digital Stratosphere.
4A. Interface
Figure 29. Screenshot of the Interface Home Screen.
4B. Platformic Writing
Figure 32. Platformic Writing: Instagram post and caption.
4C. Personal Research into digital and paper technologies in my life.
Figure 35. Chen Chen. A Small Book of Questions: Chapter III. Instagram post, @griefoflight
In this space, poetry behaves differently for me. Perhaps it is because Chen Chen writes with a beautiful blatant brightness that echoes an all-consuming love – ‘I kiss him’. Perhaps it is our own empathetic wiring that lets us see past the repetition, machinic and dull like hammered pixels.
Figure 37. Screenshot of Youtube “Journalling Ecosystems”.
My Journaling Ecosystem across Digital and Print spheres
Social Media, Digital Reading, and the Persistence of Print
The rise of social media has not precipitated the disappearance of print so much as it has recalibrated its cultural function. Digital reading practices offer immediacy and circulation, in contrast to the slowness and material depth of print. Rather than existing in opposition, digital platforms and print cultures operate in a mutually sustaining ecology. The ephemerality of social media and digital narratives drives readers towards the stability and authority of printed works. Print persists not despite social media, but because the digital intensifies our awareness of material permanence and aesthetic labour of the printed page.
Works Cited
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by
Brian Massumi, University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
Hayles, N. Katherine. “Print Is Flat, Code Is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific
Analysis.” Poetics Today, vol. 25, no. 1, 2004, pp. 67–90.
Hu, Tung-Hui. Digital Lethargy: Dispatches from an Age of Disconnection. The MIT Press, 2022.
Kittler, Friedrich. There Is No Software. Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael
Wutz, Raley, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2006, https://raley.english.ucsb.edu/wp-content/Engl800/Kittler-nosoftware.pdf
List of Figures
Figure 1. Cueva de las Manos, Río Pinturas. UNESCO World Heritage Centre. https://whc.unesco.org/. Accessed 6 Dec. 2025.
Figure 2. Cuneiform Tablet: Administrative Account Concerning the Distribution of Barley and Emmer.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/327384. Accessed 10 Dec 2025.
Figure 2.1. Cuneiform Tablet Diagram: Administrative Account Concerning the Distribution of Barley and Emmer. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/327384. Accessed 6 Dec 2025.
Figure 3. Book of the Dead, Egyptian Papyrus, 19th Dynasty. The British Museum, London.https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA10470-3. Accessed 6 Dec 2025.
Figure 4. Sappho and Alcaeus, Painting. Lawrence Alma-Tadema. https://art.thewalters.org/object/37.159/. Accessed 8 Dec 2025.
Figure 5. Florentine Ostrakon Preserving Sappho 2. Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sappho_2. Accessed 6 Dec 2025.
Figure 6. Florentine Ostrakon Preserving Sappho 2. Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence. https://digitalsappho.org/fragments/fr2/. Accessed 9 Dec. 2025.
Figure 6.1. Spraggs, Gillian. “Digital Translation of Sappho 2.” Gillian Spraggs: Translations. http://www.gillianspraggs.com/translations/sappho2.html . Accessed 9 Dec. 2025.
Figure 7. Varieties of Roman Styluses. British Library. https://www.bl.uk/stories/blogs/posts/keep-taking-the-wax-tablets. Accessed 9 Dec. 2025.
Figure 8. Book of Kells, Folio 124r: Matthew. Trinity College Dublin.https://www.visittrinity.ie/blog/why-is-the-book-of-kells-important/. Accessed 9 Dec. 2025.
Figure 9. Illuminated Manuscript Page, Book of Hours. Morgan Library & Museum Digital Facsimiles. https://archive.org/details/52.Hours/BoHpg19.jpg. Accessed 10 Dec. 2025.
Figure 10. Medieval Illumination Showing a Monk Examining Parchment. History of Universities Blog. https://blog.history.ac.uk/2019/12/the-medieval-scriptorium-visualised/ .
Figure 11. Biblia Latina (Gutenberg and Fust, 1455). Cambridge University Library. https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PR-INC-00001-A-00001-00001-03761/1. Accessed 11 Dec. 2025.
Figure 12. 19th-Century Steel Fountain Pen, 1803. Science Museum Group Collection. https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/. Accessed 11 Dec. 2025.
Figure 13. Emily Dickinson Facsimile / Envelope Poem. Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70068/unsettling-emily-dickinson. Accessed 9 Dec 2025.
Figure 14. Cembalo Scrivano, Invented by Giuseppe Ravizza, 1855. https://www.museoscienza.org/en. Accessed 11 Dec. 2025. Accessed 11 Dec 2025.
Figure 15. Woman Seated with Underwood Typewriter, 1918. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division. https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/march/typewriter-production-began. Accessed 7 Dec. 2025
Figure 16. Typescript with Handwritten Corrections by Ezra Pound, The Waste Land. New York Public Library Digital Collections.https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-f0a8-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99. Accessed 11 Dec. 2025
Figure 17. Screenshot from Simon Lavington. “A Brief History of British Computers: The First 25 Years (1948–1973).” BCS: The Chartered Institute for IT. https://www.bcs.org/articles-opinion-and-research/a-brief-history-of-british-computers-the-first-25-years-1948-1973/. Accessed 11 Dec 2025
Figure 18. ENIAC Mainframe Computer, 1947. Smithsonian National Museum of American History, https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_1297478. Accessed 10 Dec. 2025
Figure 19. IBM Punch Cards. Smithsonian Institution. https://www.si.edu/spotlight/punch-cards/punch-cards-data-processing. Accessed 8 Dec. 2025.
Figure 20. Green-on-Black Terminal Interface (VT100). DEC VT100. http://www.datormuseum.se/peripherals/terminals/vt100. Accessed 10 Dec. 2025.
Figure 21. Screenshot from Terminal User Interface: Info Scrape or Extracting. UiPath Forum.https://forum.uipath.com/t/terminal-user-interface-info-scrape-or-extracting/62947. Accessed 10 Dec. 2025.
Figure 22. 1980s Home Computer (IBM PC / Commodore). Smithsonian National Museum of American History. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/world-personal-computers-1980s-was-wacky-wonderful-place-180953274/. Accessed 10 Dec. 2025.
Figure 23. Pong (Atari, 1972). GeekBoss. https://geekboss.com/blog/history-of-computer-games. Accessed 10 Dec 2025.
Figure 24. HyperCard Stack, Apple, 1987. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/hypercardstacks. Accessed 10 Dec. 2025.
Figure 25. Screenshot of WordStar, c. 1978. Ken Shirriff, “WordStar: A Writer’s Word Processor.” Ars Technica.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/wordstar-a-writers-word-processor/. Accessed 10 Dec. 2025.
Figure 26. Microsoft Word 95 Interface. WinWorld, “Microsoft Word 95.” https://winworldpc.com/product/microsoft-word/95. Accessed 11 Dec. 2025
Figure 27. Screenshot of HTML Code from HTML Basics. Mark Nightingale Learning Platform. https://learn.marknightingale.net/tcloc/lesson-1. Accessed 11 Dec 2025.
Figure 28. Screenshot of the Homepage of Dooce, Heather Armstrong’s Personal Blog. Dooce. https://dooce.com. Accessed 7 Dec. 2025.
Figure 29. Screenshot of the Interface Home Screen, Blueberry Snail. https://www.blueberrysnail.com/hath-rs/#4B33 . Created 11 Dec. 2025.
Figure 30. Screen Recording on Pinterest, Georgia-mae Tan. Blueberry Snail. https://www.blueberrysnail.com/hath-rs/#4B33. Created 11 Dec. 2025.
Figure 31. Screen Recording on Instagram Reels, Georgia-mae Tan. Blueberry Snail. https://www.blueberrysnail.com/hath-rs/#4B33. Created 11 Dec. 2025.
Figure 32. Platformic Writing: Instagram post and caption, Georgia-mae Tan. Blueberry Snail. https://www.blueberrysnail.com/hath-rs/#4B33 Created 10 Dec. 2025
Figure 33. Instagram comments section, Georgia-mae Tan. Blueberry Snail. https://www.blueberrysnail.com/hath-rs/#4B33. Created 11 Dec. 2025.
Figure 34. Instagram. “Doomscrolling.” Instagram, uploaded by @inafinity, https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cu2ySUIODJA/?igsh=Z2ZhaWI1c2s2dWl3
Figure 35. Chen Chen. A Small Book of Questions: Chapter III. Instagram post, @griefoflight, 12 Dec. 2025,https://www.instagram.com/p/CtR0Of7s82P/?igsh=MTFpb2h4OTRpZDR2Yw==.
Figure 36. Tan, Georgia‑mae. Poem from Quilted, 2024, “Growing Pains.” Photographed by Georgia‑mae Tan, 2025.
Figure 37. Screenshot of Youtube, Georgia-mae Tan. Blueberry Snail. Created 10 Dec. 2025. https://www.blueberrysnail.com/hath-rs/
Figure 38. Picture of Journaling process, Georgia-mae Tan. Blueberry Snail. Created 10 Dec. 2025. https://www.blueberrysnail.com/hath-rs/