I read somewhere recently that the only medium with any power left was the written word. All others exhausted their ability to shock or transform. While I don't entirely believe that, I do think that the written word has fallen under the radar a bit, especially as an agent of transformation. This reminder came about from the many virtual interfaces that were inspired by works of fiction - most recently learning that Google Earth was inspired by Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. And of course the classic example of William Gibson conceptualizing "cyberspace" in Neuromancer. A little poking around online yielded this audio recording (transcript included) by physicist/ children's lit scholar Janice McAdam precisely on the subject. She follows a slightly quainter (for the most part) route, but I appreciate an examination of the subject by a physicist. Highly appropriate. It is all a really beautiful example of collaborative work. A writer visualizes, thus setting into motion the potential for existence. Designers and developers take it from there and make it real. The reader becomes the user. It is so exciting to know that words caught on paper can create anything we desire. (Beyond just "amusing ourselves to death.") If the writer is the prophet, could we please work on a better future together?
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Here's a quote from Milton's Paradise Lost, which I encountered in a Sheila Heti essay in Shary Boyle's monograph Otherworld Uprising:
"Man can do nothing directly to achieve his own freedom: what he can do is indicate his willingess to be set free by knocking down his idols, and so allow the Word of God to circulate freely in human society. The prophet is not a Utopian or a social planner, but an iconoclast, a breaker of the false images than man worships."
That's "prophet" being used in a different sense than you use it, but Heti points out that in that context its analogous to "artist."
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