A Literary History of Word Processing

Pay no attention to the neatly formatted and deceptively typo-free surfaces of the average Microsoft Word file, Mr. Kirschenbaum declared at a recent lunchtime lecture at the New York Public Library titled “Stephen Kings Wang,” a cheeky reference to that best-selling novelists first computer, bought in the early 1980s.”The story of writing in the digital age is every bit as messy as the ink-stained rags that would have littered Gutenbergs print shop or the hot molten lead of the Linotype machine,” Mr. Kirschenbaum said, before asking a question he hopes he can answer: “Who were the early adopters, the first mainstream authors to trade in their typewriters for WordStar and WordPerfect?” — NYT: A Literary History of Word Pro.