Blog Post #2

Writing is a form of communication in itself, and like every form of communication, it needs vehicles to spread and be seen by an audience. That's where networks and materiality come in. All three of these things are interconnected, because if they weren't, the chain in which we get our information would break.

Writing's main purpose is to send a message. Yes, you have the occasional babble or weird word doodles, but in its purest form, writing is supposed to tell us something. That's where networks come in. New networks are sprouting everyday; it started with cave walls, then turned into paper-- letters, scrolls, even billboards-- and now it's moving into the digital age with computers and cell phones, texting and blog posts. As technology advances, new networks are growing and they are bigger than they've ever been. We're in the age of connectedness; with two taps on your smart phone, you can connect to the Internet and everything on it.

Materiality is a similar thing to networks in the sense that they are constantly evolving and growing into new forms that can be accessed by a wider and more varied audience. When the only material writing had to be produced on was paper or even walls, it could be destroyed, written over, erased, and its life would be very short, stifling its ability to be passed along the network. However, in more recent times-- again as technology grows and develops-- materiality has become more long-lasting. As the saying goes, what goes onto the Internet stays on the Internet, and that couldn't be more true. With its global network and its essential immortality, the Internet provides a constant material for writing to produced upon as well as the network for it to travel across.