Authors as Strategic Constructions in the Multimedia Age

Abstract

What does it mean to be an author as the practices associated with connective and/or collective intelligence continue spreading through the world of the mass-media? More specifically, how are authors, and publishers as well, already undergoing important transformations as new information and communication technologies allow the capitalization of knowledge? The diverse philosophical and sociological implications of this question are explored below in contexts ranging from industrial-organizational knowledge work, to the creation and marketing of popular literary fiction. At both of these extremes, however, the central thesis is “depersonalization.” That is, it will be argued that the effect of the new information/communication systems is to dilute, conceal, or entirely eliminate identification of the single mind or minds that have been absorbed into the systems.