Chapter 13 focuses on writing regarding the World Wide Web. Rice traces the history of the Web, and informs the reader on the rapid rate of expansion since it’s rise to popularity in 1992. Due to the fact that so many people are online these days, the internet has become a true cultural entity. This advancement of technology seems widely accepted in society, and could even be deemed as “cool.” Corporations have caught on to this truth, and have merged capitalism with cool, in turn creating a hip and futuristic new style of web-based writing. One example of this is the computer manufacturing company is Hewlett-Packard, with their Cooltown advertisements. This company has created a fictional place in the future where our every waking moment is intertwined with machines and technology. The idea Hewlett-Packard is trying to convey is that the integration of their products in the future will increase our standards of living, and be beneficial to our everyday lives. Rice infers that this interlinking of individual subjects to one another would be a more productive way of viewing the world. When two separate objects are intertwined as one, the end product possesses the quality of cool, and becomes a very powerful marketing tool. The connections Hewlett-Packard creates between business and lifestyle serves as an excellent way to sell a product. Rice also writes on the way that an enterprise can have several different organizations that appear as separate entities, but are actually not independent companies at all. This is also a good means of marketing, because one may not be aware of this, and feel as if there is a system of cooperation between big business. In this way, corporations can expose an audience to several different avenues who are unaware of their connection to each other. In conclusion, it appears that this act of interlinking could be both a positive and a negative factor in the capitalist market.
Chapter 14 focuses on cyberculture, and it’s effect on culture and writing. Rice delves into what exactly constitutes cyberculture. His examples center around nearly anything technological, including music, e-mail and chat rooms, and movies. Cyberspace is somewhat intangible, a new way of thinking for lack of better phrase. Certain elements come together to define this concept. Strange, interconnected, and futuristic seem to constitue this idea. Science fiction novelist William Gibson described cyberspace as “a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions” in his his novel Neuromancer, several years before the Web was even created. Gibson somehow predicted the effect that technology could eventually have on our lives. Cyberculture forces us to participate more than almost any media form in existance. This participation gives the Web a sense of cool, in that we must be active in its creation and proliferation. Rice goes back to the very creation of the World Wide Web, by a scientist named Tim Berners-Lee. He wrote a program that could connect scientists with each other’s work. This idea of sharing one’s progress and work brings Rice to asks his readers to consider the advantages and disadvantages of collaborative writing. How would literature be affected if we began to emphasize the writing over its author? This form of connection and interlinking is prevalent on the Web in that information and ideas are all connected by hyperlinks. Sometimes this helps for clarity, but various web sites actually use hyperlinks to muddle cpurpose and cause. These sites may seem allusive, or unclear, which could actually force a more participatory action from the reader. These sites may seem useless or pointless at first, but one must come to discover why the author has portrayed his writing in this manner. This allusiveness that some sites possess, and the participation that some sites require offer a new take on literature, and could very well be deemed as cool in the traditional sense.
