Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum

ISBN 10: 0674417070 / ISBN 13: 9780674417076

Published by Belknap Press, 2016

About this Item

Writing in the digital age has been as messy as the inky rags in Gutenberg's shop or the molten lead of a Linotype machine. Matthew Kirschenbaum examines how creative authorship came to coexist with the computer revolution. Who were the early adopters, and what made others anxious? Was word processing just a better typewriter, or something more? Num Pages: 340 pages. BIC Classification: TBX; U; UFD. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 235 x 156. . . 2016. Hardcover. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780674417076

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing
• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674417070
• ISBN 13: 9780674417076
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The story of writing in the digital age is every bit as messy as the ink-stained rags that littered the floor of Gutenberg’s print shop or the hot molten lead of the Linotype machine. During the period of the pivotal growth and widespread adoption of word processing as a writing technology, some authors embraced it as a marvel while others decried it as the death of literature. The product of years of archival research and numerous interviews conducted by the author, Track Changes is the first literary history of word processing.

Matthew Kirschenbaum examines how the interests and ideals of creative authorship came to coexist with the computer revolution. Who were the first adopters? What kind of anxieties did they share? Was word processing perceived as just a better typewriter or something more? How did it change our understanding of writing?

Track Changes balances the stories of individual writers with a consideration of how the seemingly ineffable act of writing is always grounded in particular instruments and media, from quills to keyboards. Along the way, we discover the candidates for the first novel written on a word processor, explore the surprisingly varied reasons why writers of both popular and serious literature adopted the technology, trace the spread of new metaphors and ideas from word processing in fiction and poetry, and consider the fate of literary scholarship and memory in an era when the final remnants of authorship may consist of folders on a hard drive or documents in the cloud.

About the Author

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum is Associate Professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park.