Review of: Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016.

Abstract

What is a Literary history of word processing? The importance of this book and its innovative nature is brilliantly summarized in its title. Matthew Kirschenbaum’s essay «seeks to narrate and describe in material and historical terms how computers, specifically word processing, became integral to literary authorship and literary writing» (p. xiii). The book follows a diachronic path, in particular a«reverse chronological trajectory [...], sometimes identified with what is called media archaeology» (p. xv). The focus of each chapter is however mostly thematic. This review will go through all of them, some more superficially than others.