Beyond word processing: The computer as a new writing space

Abstract As a technology for writing, the computer promises to redefine the relationship between author, reader and writing space. Word processing, which looks back to the medium of print, only hints at what the computer can do. More sophisticated programs for ‘hypertext’ and ‘hypermedia’ can now present text as an evolving structure, the sum of hierarchical and associative connections among verbal and pictorial elements. Unlike printing, which lends fixity and monumentality to the text, electronic writing is a radically unstable and impermanent form, in which the text exists only from moment to moment and in which the reader joins with the writer in constituting the text.