Conclusion: Humanities Computing

The book concludes by turning its attention to actual machines that were designed to help writers piece together and assemble different fragments of text. Manifesting the convergence of literary modernism and early computing in actual writing machines, these prototypical word processors bridge the gap between modernist experiments in machinic writing and the word processing tools we take for granted today. Such machines encompass a flurry of activity at the intersection of the academy, military secrecy, and corporate research and development otherwise designated under the moniker humanities computing: the discipline that gave rise to today’s digital humanities. Briefly discussing this field and its attempts to combine literary text with computers, the conclusion reflects upon the historical overlaps between literary modernism and the early digital humanities. At the same time, it carefully refutes naïve narratives of technological positivism that see modernist experimentation as simply nascent versions of later humanities computing work. Advocating a dual view in which we see modern manuscripts as both familiar and strange, prescient and counterfactual, Paper Processors concludes by arguing contemporary digital humanities work may direct its gaze not into the future but into its past, and specifically to literary modernism, as place to make its methods new.