The New River

Abstract

In 1996, when, with the technical support of Len Hatfield, I posted the first issue of The New River, email was still a novelty and the Internet was, to most of the population, largely a mystery. Today, a mere thirteen years later, the world has been radically transformed by cascading advances in digital technology, and there’s hardly an individual or an industry that hasn’t had to in some way adapt to these changes. That’s certainly true for art and artists and for the industries that revolve around them. While I wouldn’t have guessed back in 1996 that so much change would happen so quickly, it was clear that change was coming even back then. Once writers and artists started producing work on computer screens and consumers started reading and viewing work on computer screens, then all of the possibilities of digital technology— which include the ability to link words and documents, and to incorporate multiple media in a single work—would begin to influence the direction of literature and art. That notion—that digital technology would eventually influence and alter the direction of literature and art—was what lead to the founding of The New River.