ABSTRACT
A statistic from 1994 supports the assertion that the computer is the most important technological development of our time. In that year for the first time, the number of computers sold in the United States exceeded the number of televisions sold. The phenomenal rise in the sales of personal computer hardware and software from a modest start in the late 1970s is but one indication that the computer is central to how we define our world today as well as how we imagine our future. Given the proliferation of computer-based innovations across diverse everyday activities, it takes little imagination to see that advances in computer technology have become a catalyst for social and cultural change, much as television did almost a generation ago. But, the potential consequences of becoming digital, as one writer has put it (Negroponte, 1995), are likely to exceed exponentially the influence of television. Like television, computer technology promises to effect changes in popular culture; but unlike television, it is likely to effect profound changes in our intellectual lives as well (Lanham, 1993). Most important for the topic of this chapter, electronic forms of reading and writing will both contribute to and support those changes.
