Ian On The Red Dot

Andrew Keen who is the author of ‘the cult of the amateur‘ will probably throw a fit after reading this New York Times article on cellphone novels in Japan.  Best quote by a popular cellphone novelist on her generation:

They don’t read works by professional writers because their sentences are too difficult to understand, their expressions are intentionally wordy, and the stories are not familiar to them…

Tried looking for some English cellphone novels but to no avail.  Instead I found this article at USA Today about a novel where the entire story is told in the format of mobile phone text messages.  Same difference?  Cellphone novels as a genre is presumably influenced by the tool (i.e. mobile phone) that is used to produce the stories.  The Finnish novel mentioned in the USA Today’s article is constrained by the use of a format of communication that is increasingly becoming commonplace to individuals living in developed and developing nations.   One is influenced by the tool.  One uses the output of the tool.