I’m not done with Landow, so I’m just commenting on Foucault (for now). My first reaction is more of a random thought. Yet, I feel I should ask/share it. What about the names we use to post. I used Wendi, others initials or last names, Christi her full name. Does it mean Christi is the only one who authored her work? Did I author my work or does it matter because this isn’t our work we are commenting on another’s? What does or name mean on our post? What did our posting names mean are we authors or did we just comment? Before posting I changed my user name to my full name.

If I write a 200+ page game document, I’m not an author? I think this is a bit tricky, I’m a designer. According to the text I’m not an author, even if I considered myself to be one. To me, the text would be important because the game sold, it was popular and I became successful.

Suppose I write an article for one of the big gaming conferences on the importance of sound in video games. The text then changed the way sound was done in game creation – what would I be? Would I be an author of an important gaming text or would I be someone that contributed to make something better – science was referenced in the text. Or would I go on faceless even though I made something better?

I think the problem with hypermedia/hypertext and assembling it, is the complexity to not only pay attention to the creation of the visuals (illustrations, maps, charts, graphs) and the text, but it’s also the changing of arrangements and combinations that can affect in hyper- linking.

On the question of who is an author and reconfiguring the author, I do agree with Landow that collaboration is a key element in hypertext reading and writing. I think in a way both the writer and reader collaborate with the computer.

As far as all these arguments about a work that uses hypertext losing “authorship” and losing contextualization goes, the only difference I see is how fast or how easy new media makes it for that to happen.

“The important point here is that hypermedia linking automatically produces collaboration.” (Landow page 143) I would say the same thing about footnotes and references. How is that any different?

To me, an author seems like it would be not only the creator of something but also the other person who experiences what was created, since a person formulates/creates his or her own experience from the creator’s creation. It also seems like “author” is a human concept, a label we place on a scapegoat that we can blame and argue against when we dislike a particular discourse. In a sense along the lines of dual authorship, how we interpret someone else’s creation is our own fault if we don’t like what we experience since we’re creating that experience not only from what we’re presented but also from our own background.

My question is when someone has been accepted as an author, and the author’s work is interpreted in several different ways by several different people, then could an author’s work be considered, to some degree, the work of several others?

If there is anything that I have gathered from these readings, it’s that question.

We live in a world where everything can be copied and pasted, re-worked and re-imagined to become someone else’s artwork (for lack of a better term). What defines the word ‘author’ when living in the world of the internet?

What constitutes who the author is and what works exist? I don’t think any answer can be reached. If we sit and nitpick and every little thing an author creates, we would have rap sheets that would run 100 miles long. There are boundaries which authors create. Boundaries that are confined within the image of the author. But we should move beyond the rules that bind us to the author’s work and decide for ourselves what is art and what is not.