Computers and Writing Papers

This past weekend Kara groaned to me that she had papers to write—and assignments to hand in. Some of them were group projects—each student prepared a portion and then merged it together.

The day my senior college thesis was due, a friend showed me her final paper. It was considerably thicker than mine such that that no ordinary staple could pierce through the pages despite the equivalent content. And the type itself was not as defined nor was the font (a word not invented yet) like that of my manual typewriter. And the vertical edges of the paper were not razor sharp—they had the barest of perforation.

It was the first computer generated word processed document I had ever seen. Her 30 page paper only took 25 minutes to print. It was in dot matrix. I was in awe. The year was 1982.

Writing papers in college and graduate school was always a difficult task for me. It had nothing to do with writer’s block—it was the opposite. I could not physically get the thoughts from my brain to the paper at an equal rate. My thinking was vastly quicker than my pencil. By the time I scratched out the words of one thought seven more had passed me by and were forgotten.

And once I had written a semi-coherant draft, new thoughts interrupted the cohesive writing process. Sentences and words meandered up the sides of the pages. There were arrows and cross-outs and editing symbols. It was a visual mess—nearly undecipherable. Nostradamus had less enigmatic prose.

And the final step—typing—had its own inherent obstacles. Sometimes whole paragraphs needed to be erased and moved. Word deletions and substitutions prompted entirely new pages to be written. It was exhausting and frustrating. To achieve a final product commensurate with my level of expectation took days of production.

And had Microsoft Word not been invented—all my thoughts would still be churning in my head. Word is the key reason I may write my blog—it is the vehicle of thought transport. I may write in a total stream of consciousness forgoing spelling, grammar and syntax—with corrections coming later.  I can drag sentences and paragraphs and then move them back. And the rate at which I keyboard is equal to the firing of synapses in my brain. I may write prolifically and without restraint.

My thoughts may also be split into separate documents—I may write two or three different blog posts simultaneously-- moving back and forth from one to another. Editing can take minutes or days. Sentences and words can be inserted or modified with ease. Wikipedia is a mere click away.

So when Kara complained to me about all the writing she needed to do for her courses I reminded her about what it was like in the dark ages—before computers—when everything took an eternity. We could not write group papers because no one wanted the task of typing the entire thing. I explained that often I did not go out on weekend nights—just to complete my work.

But she didn’t really care. It was like my mother telling me how she is a “depression baby.”

Sometimes moving forward requires not dwelling on the past---all that matters is the task at hand. And nostalgia is not a good enough reason for throwing out that brand new filled box of corasable paper and typing ribbon you found in the attic. They are relics—like dot-matrix printers and floppy disks.