I concur with Louis here. New things are always blamed for the failings of
the young in eras when those blaming are perhaps no longer quite so young as
they were. It is a fallacy, and a silly one. Computers are tools.
 
I suspect a stronger influence on writing/thought was the typewriter. The
typewriter had a profound effect on modernism's brevity and layout, I
suspect; it lends itself to a kind of mechanical stutter; I wonder if the
ease with which the keyboard flows will actually bring back a more graceful
mode of expression, in which sentences will follow the breathing of the
musical phrase rather than the imperative of the carriage bell and the
return bar. The quill pen & inkwell technology suited well the phrasing of
the prose style of its day; a period or a stop marked by heavy punctuation
meshed well with the time that a dip of a pinna would last.
 
> ----------
> From:         Louis H. Silverstein
> Reply To:     Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
> Sent:         Monday, January 17, 2000 3:02 PM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Re: Thanks and query
>
> On the other hand, as a handicapped user of the typewriter and then the
> computer, I found that my ability to write and express myself improved a
> thousandfold once I had a computer because of the greater ease with which
> I
> could rewrite and organize thoughts and content without retyping endless
> drafts.
>
> Cheers, Louis
>
> At 01:46 PM 01/17/2000 -0600, you wrote:
> >Edward Said, in his address to the MLA at the recent convention in
> Chicago,
> >suggested that computers are making students lazy lightweights.
> Typewriters,
> >and perhaps better yet, pen and ink, helped scholars extend their
> thoughts,
> >and get it right the first time. If one can cut and paste, then the first
> >time through can be rougher than rough.  And how many can direct their
> >attention by an enquiry for extended periods? Where are the hungry
> students,
> >a scholar asked in the Chronicle last year. Where are the enquiring
> minds?
> >Without these, Pound and Pound studies really will do little more than
> clear
> >the boundary of the 21st century.
> >
> >Robert E Kibler, PhD
> >English and Humanities
> >Valley City State University
> >[log in to unmask]
> >701-845-7108
> >
> Louis H. Silverstein
> Literary Anthropologist (specializing in H.D. and her circle as well as
> things mysterious)
> (e-mail: [log in to unmask])
>
> "Books determine, have determined, will determine our lives, as readers
> and
> writers, and for this, let us give thanks."  Lawrence Clark Powell.  BOOKS
> WEST SOUTHWEST  (1957: 37)
>