Brief History of Digital Documentation, 1945 - 2016 (version 1)

By Howard Gold, PhD student, English Department, Old Dominion University.

re-posted September 22, 2016

Radio Shack TRS "Trash" 80 Model III in school

Writers of every ilk are indebted to mathematicians and engineers who built early information-storage and retrieval systems during the mid-twentieth century. Without those, the age of personal computing and word processing could not have exploded in the 1980s. The pervasive use and ease of digital documentation quickly replaced traditional typewriters, expanding storytelling, documented teachers’ notes, encouraging a global sharing of academic findings and more, from the highest levels of academia and government to neighborhood schools and kitchen tables. This occurred during a quick evolution of word-processor-centric computers available at retail stores, such as Radio Shack’s popular TRS-80, the WANG VS series, Commodore’s 64, leading up to the early IBM Personal Computer (“PC”) and Apple’s first MAC, all using software from WordStar to WordPerfect to Microsoft Word. “These instances are also contextualized as signifiers of the culture’s general adoption of personal computers in writing and the office environ” (Lambertson). Of course, we know this now. But how did we get here? When did digital documentation begin, and how did it become a mainstay of our culture? This essay is a brief statement of key issues for consideration.

Technically speaking…

From a technical view, we start at 1940s Princeton with John von Neumann's first data-storing computer (Atomic Archive). That led to his work (with fellow mathematicians and

USS Nautilus at sea

engineers) on the USS Nautilus, launched on January 21, 1954, which did not set sail September 30, 1954 (Submarine Force Museum). Anecdotal reports contend that the delay was caused by–among other reasons–documentation and a simple matter of physics. The documentation for everything from repairing stoves to launching nuclear missiles was reportedly heavier and of more volume than the ship itself. All the manuals needed to be digitized and capable of storing “programming information” with easy-to-read “data” as text. Previously, only numerical data for computation was stored, making this copying of files to microfiche or computer tape for storage and retrieval on board a military vessel ground-breaking.

Philosophically speaking…

In “Orality and Literacy" (1982), Walter J. Ong states that writing is a technology, but “Technologies are artificial—paradox again—artificiality is natural to human beings. Technology, [properly interiorized, does not degrade human life but on the contrary enhances it” (Ong). In the same text, he points out that consciousness of ideas cannot be fully realized without writing. The interaction of speech, “orality”, is something that we are born with, while writing is a learned activity. Writing is an extension of orality, and is therefore “consciousness-raising.” Over thirty years ago, Ong stated that electronically or digitally produced text could replace books or newspapers, and foresaw a growth of what we now call eBooks and audio texts (Ong).

Modernist view…

So, where did we writers and students get the big idea that we can adopt technology created by mathematicians and the Department of Defense and for our tasks? Before migrating to digitized text, writers’ thoughts and even the thinking process—the order of prioritizing thoughts, documenting

Anne Rice books on Amazon

them, creating new ideas, purging unworkable ones—was already underway before 1900 when Nietzsche typed the phrase, “Our writing instruments are also working on our thoughts (Kirschenbaum). Anne Rice, who came of age in the computer era reveals that, despite writing in different genres, their thinking changed by using computers to write. Anne Rice admits, “Once you really get used to a computer and you get used to entering the information from that keyboard, things happen in your mind, I mean, you change as a writer. You’re able to do things that maybe you never would have thought of doing before.”

We creators of digital documentation, from poets to tech writers, are faced with two roles: author and reader. As authors, it is easy to let the words come out of our brains, through our fingers, across the keyboard, and onto the screen in various levels of awareness. But care must be taken, as each digital writer is also a member of their own audience. The writer can often see the working version of a draft in the same format as the audience, removing the middle-steps of production and publication. Jerome McGann’s contends that perceiving text today requires  “emulate[ing] the humanists of the fifteenth century who were confronted with a similar upheaval of their materials, means, and modes of Knowledge production” (qtd. by O'Sullivan). This new digital literacy requires new skills for authors and readers alike, bringing new phrases of like transliteracy, metaliteracy and multimodal literacy to the forefront (Stordy).

References

Jabr, Ferris. "The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens." Scientific American 11 Apr 2013. 18 Sep 2016. <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/>.

Kirschenbaum, Matthew. "Technology changes how authors write, but the big impact isn’t on their style." 26 Jul 2016. The Conversation. 19 Sep 2016. https://theconversation.com/technology-changes-how-authors-write-but-the-big-impact-isnt-on-their-style-61955.

Lambertson, Jessa A. "Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing." Library Journal (2016): 91. 18 Sep 2016. 

National Science Digital Library. "John von Neumann (1903 - 1957)." 2015. Atomic Archive. AJ Software & Multimedia, National Science Foundation Grant 0434253 . 21 Sep 2016. <http://www.atomicarchive.com/Bios/vonNeumann.shtml>.

Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy. New York: Routledge, 1982, 2002. 18 Sep 2016.

O'Sullivan, James. "The New Apparatus of Influence: Material Modernism in the Digital Age." International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 8.2 (2014): 226-238. 20 Sep 2016. www.euppublishing.com/ijhac.

Stordy, Peter Howard. "Taxonomy Of Literacies." Journal of Documentation 71.3 (2015): 456-476. Applied Science & Technology Source. Web. 22 Sept. 2016.

Submarine Force Museum. Submarine Force Museum, Home of the Historic Ship NAUTILUS. 2013. 18 Sep 2016. <http://www.submarinemuseum.org/nautilus/index.shtml>.