We Participate in the Evolution of the Digital World

Read this article in French:
Pourquoi continuer d’écrire de la poésie dans un monde numérique ?

An Everyday Scene

You go online.
You type into a search engine:
“poetry on the Web”

The answer comes back:
“Poetry on the Web transforms traditional writing into an interactive, visual and auditory experience accessible everywhere.”

That’s true. Digital technology is transforming the ways we write, publish and read poetry. Instapoetry, which emerged with social media, is one example.

But the movement also goes in the other direction.

Every poem we write and publish adds a few words to this immense digital space. Just a few words, but words that carry an image, an emotion, a human experience, a way of looking at the world.

We do more than simply inhabit the digital world. Through what we choose to publish there, we also participate in its evolution.

A single poem may seem tiny in the vastness of the Web, but we should not think only at the scale of one poem. Whether published in a book or on the Web, every poem joins other human traces that, together, participate in the evolution of global culture.

When a poem is published on the Web, it also enters this space of circulation that we build every day.

We constantly use words to communicate, search or explain. Poetry reminds us that words can also make us imagine, feel and see differently. Writing poetry means exploring this other possibility of language. A few words can be enough to evoke a mental image, an emotion, a memory or a question.

That is also why it matters to keep writing poetry and putting it into circulation. The digital world should not become merely a useful space for finding information, working, calculating or communicating. It should also carry the emotional, intuitive and imaginative dimensions of human experience.

Continuing to publish poetry there is one way of helping to ensure this human presence within the network.

The digital world will continue to evolve. What we choose to write and put into circulation will also help determine what it becomes. Poetry can continue to be part of it.

We have the opportunity to leave poetic traces in this algorithmic world, so let’s do it.

📚 All Micro-essays

This text is part of the Understanding Today’s Culture series, a chronicle of our global networked culture.

→ Return to the Micro-essays page

Explore Further

🟦 The More Digital the World Becomes, the More Important the Human Becomes

🟦 Why Do We Still Need Artists?

🟦 Why I Continue to Write and Publish in a World Saturated with Technology

---

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor