Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing

In this book Michael Heim provides the first consistent philosophical basis for critically evaluating the impact of word processing on our use of and ideas about language.

First released in 1987, back when personal computers had just started replacing typewriters, this book asked what was then an important question: How deep are the changes word processing is making to the way we relate to words and to the structure of thought that words embody? Today, with the PC's conquest of the desktop complete, that question matters more than ever--and so does Heim's thoughtful attempt at an answer.

Grounding his arguments in a wide-ranging review of the Western philosophical tradition, Heim starts by making a nuanced case for the pivotal role of writing tools in shaping the way we think. He begins with the flowering of literacy that informed the philosophical discoveries of ancient Greece and continues through to the print technology that loomed so large in the rise of modern European thought. And Heim suggests that now similarly fundamental changes are afoot in our transition from the culture of the printed book to that of the fluid, word-processed electronic text.

Heim's not your typical cybervisionary, though. He doesn't generalize about these changes, nor does he just celebrate them; he takes a close look at the experience of actually using word processing technologies, careful to note what's been lost in the shift from paper to screen. At times his observations seem dated, especially given how little he has to say about computer networks. But in general they're a model for the kind of philosophical attention that computers still don't get enough of. --Julian Dibbell