Beyond the Book: François Bon and the Digital Transition

In numerous entries on his website Le Tiers livre (tierslivre.net), the French writer François Bon insists on the momentous nature of the transformations taking place in the contemporary literary world (“Si la littérature”; “Ceci n’est pas”; “Qu’est-ce qu’un livre numérique”). Bon argues that the advent of the Internet is equal in significance to the print revolution brought by Gutenberg. According to this view, the Web is not just one more medium among others, but in fact operates a number of crucial displacements in our modes of writing and reading and ultimately alters literary and social practices: “Internet est ‘transparent’, il traverse la totalité des pratiques mais en tant que lié à cette pratique elle-même, et non pas sa médiatisation” (“Vers un Internet”).