Travel writing cross-mediality: from blogs to artifical intelligence

Abstract

This article addresses the genre of contemporary travel writing and discusses its cross-mediation in various digital forms: blogs, apps and the ultimate case where it is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) to actually produce the narrative. After providing some preliminary remarks on the difficulty to find a proper definition of travel writing, the article proposes to consider it not only as a genre, but also as a praxis. This open the way to a discussion that addresses the pragmatic effects that this kind of writing bears, suggesting that the more technology takes control over travelling and writing as social practices, the more these experiences are objectified and turned into acts. This is so, until it is an AI to be (put) in charge of the narrative of a journey: the experimental case of 1 the Road shows that the way in which AI textualizes its own experience resonates with the traditional form of hypomnemata providing food for thought about literary pleasure, authoriality and techno-self.

Keywords

• literatura de viagem
• redes sociais
• inteligência artificial