Literature in the Age of Emerging Technologies: New Perspectives and Possibilities

Literature and technology have had a dynamic relationship throughout. Technology has always affected the creation, dissemination, reading and interpretation of the written word – from the invention of the printing press through digital books, social media, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. The new technologies that have developed in the modern era have opened up new avenues for the expression of literature, as well as raised new issues of authorship, creativity, originality, reading practices, and the future of the literary text. Of course, Digital Humanities, electronic literature, virtual reality, augmented reality and online publishing are especially important in this shift.In this paper I'm exploring the evolving relationship between literature and new technologies. The paper argues against the notion that technology is just a means to copy traditional literature. Instead, it has become an active entity which alters the form, structure, circulation and interpretation of literary works. New possibilities for writing, translation, editing and literary analysis have been opened by the use of AI, and digital platforms have made literature more accessible and interactive. Meanwhile, such changes have raised concerns about plagiarism, copyright, authorship, misinformation, algorithmic bias and the potential for a loss of human creativity. So the paper discusses the opportunities and challenges of the new technologies in the study of literature. It argues that in the technological era literature will not be abolished, but is mutating into new forms that force readers and scholars to reconsider what it means to be an author, a text, a reader, and a creator. The fields of literature and emerging technologies merge in the Electronic Literature collection. The collection of Electronic Literature brings together the fields of literature and emerging technologies.