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last.updated 5.17.05

 

The Powerbook


Purpose

To examine the metaphors and narratives of technology in various artistic texts.


Questions

  • What is Winterson’s argument? What is the point of the book?
  • What does this text teach us that technology is capable of?
  • What role does the technology play in her text? Is it important? superfluous?
  • What does the structural metaphor say about the text? technology?


  • What is meatspace? What is the significance of using "meat" as opposed to
    "meet"?
  • Was there supposed to be some type of moral lesson to this novel. Sure it was written very concisely, but it was so disjointed that I was often left wondering, "huh?". Was this to demonstrate just how abbreviated and punctuated technology is? Additionally, what's love got to do with it? The novel, that is.
  • Winterson intersplices narrative with segments of "realtime" synchronous online discussion with Ali's fictional counterpart. Repeatedly posed are questions about the nature of reality as text. Is Ali/the narrator being written by the story, or writing the story? Are these composition processes, as represented in the electronic writing (using the computer or Internet) segments, mutually exclusive?
  • Does the "powerbook" ultimately act as tool which sets Ali free to write/choose her own ending by allowing her to question her own power, or does it enslave her to the old narratives?
  • Time and technology-- because machines can only do/ show what we already have (done/ seen/ made/ thought of), are we constantly "fighting the last war"? Does technology support continuance of an older tradition because it was created out of the ideas of the past?
  • How does cyberspace heighten the story of "forbidden love," Is the
    _unseen, yet present_ forbidden lover even more exciting? What element does this add?
  • How does the on-line medium influence Ali and the readers' experiences? In
    what ways do the stops (waiting for a response) and starts (active
    chatting) heighten the movement of the story?
  • My question is regarding the character Ali. Is this the same Ali throughout the book? Does Ali become Alix, for example, on page 161?
  • Second question, is the narrator male or female?