I used to cut and paste text quite literally–except I used scotch tape instead of paste…

So production on a computer is, for me, an easier way to accomplish a process that’s not dramatically different from working on paper, whether with pencil or keyboard.

Your post points out that this always changing interface may, in fact, get people to have a very different relationship to the text they produce–as they produce it.

Even in this context, do you think writers will move away from the idea of drafts vs. finished product.
I know most students don’t make big changes to drafts, even when that’s part of a class assignment. In my experience, they add to the work they’ve already done, but don’t change much.

The difference in attitude comes when writers/students are invested in the project beyond getting an assignment done for class: an honors paper in history, a piece of creative writing for fun, a PhD dissertation chapter. Then, I see the drafts changing as people work through ideas.

maturity as thinker/writer? Investment in the project?

re point 2: I agree about leaving a trail of some sort. The evidence of our changing ideas and knowledge is an important part of the process.

The Bible in 140 character chunks is a brilliant bit. Thanks for sharing it.
Laura

First, as someone who works with student writers, the opportunities offered by the mutability of digital texts is deceptive. That one’s students HAVE a change in perspective,a more nuanced idea, or better information to share in a second or subsequent draft is the real challenge, and the fact that digital texts can be so easily changed may lead us to underestimate the role that time plays in getting there. I mean, when changing and correcting were more time consuming, I tended to do a lot more writing by hand, and a lot more thinking away from the emerging text in order to bring more cogent thoughts to the writing. As one who came to writing this way,the mutability of digital texts is mostly opportunity, but for students who have always approached writing with the sense that it can be changed at any time with minimal effort, the temptation must be always to shape at the point of utterance.

Second, as a reader, I think now of the situatedness of texts–how even errors and incorrect information can tell me something about time and place. That there are errors/falshoods–whether from carelessness or lack of knowledge–in a text seems to me to be a given. So, too, will there be support or evidence that turns out later to be weak or even ineffective, but as a marker of how people think or thought at that time, these seem to be invaluable. Literary texts are generally left alone in this regard, and they reveal much about the time and place in which they were written, but I think non-literary texts (for lack of a better term) including academic texts are at least as revealing.

I don’t think that means we can’t correct mistakes, bolster support, or offer new iterations of our thinking; just that the paper trail–or in this case, the digital trail–is an important element of a text worth keeping.

On a lighter note, check out this link:
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=75604703818&h=yO-7G&u=48Oko&ref=mf