The combination of auto-save and syncing the file to the cloud likely saved a countless number of people (including me) from a sudden impulse of data-loss-induced self-harm. In turn, it also eliminated the lingering uneasiness in the subconscious-concerns about losing data in the recesses of the mind-and thus dispelled a gnawing anxiety when using word processors. (Recall, also, that there was a time before helpful messages asking if you want to save before quitting.) Google Docs obviated the need for the Save button. With that preamble, let’s examine Google Docs’ capabilities, beginning with its eliminative features, of which three are worth numbering.įirst, remember the Save button? Invariably in the icon of a floppy disk-the emblem of unreliable storage-it demanded much attention, and you’d ignore it at your peril. Which is to say, debating who came up with a certain feature is not only a tricky exercise but also unfruitful. And Google Docs’ add-ons go way back to WordStar, which provided mail merging capabilities and spell checkers. Google Docs’ edit history feature comes from, of course, Microsoft Word’s “Track Changes” feature, which can find its elementary form in WordPerfect. (Try writing a high-stakes email without ever hitting backspace.) As swanky as they are, vintage typewriters are unusable for writing unless you are Don DeLillo, which I presume you aren’t.īefore examining Google Docs’ features, it’s worth acknowledging that all software features are the product of kleptomania, which in this field is rampantly practiced and knowingly forgiven. With any kind of backtracking-scrolling up, deleting characters, moving the cursor backward (who am I kidding, there’s no cursor)-disallowed, it’s like being asked to advance on a narrow bridge without stepping back. For those of us who aren’t dexterous users of mechanical typewriters, they can feel claustrophobic and constricting. Kirschenbaum, a professor of English and digital studies at the University of Maryland, details the changes-both habitual and psychological-that took place when writers started adopting word processors in lieu of typewriters. In Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing, Matthew G. To defamiliarize Google Docs’ influence, it might help to rewind the frame even further back to the time when another categorical jump happened: when word processors decimated typewriters. Even after its ambition went limp, however, it has remained relevant and influential, a trendsetting piece of software that new generations copy from and try to dethrone.Īnd while its forerunner Microsoft Word was a qualitative improvement over older word processors like WordStar and WordPerfect-which Microsoft Word had decimated to consolidate the market-Google Docs was a categorically different product from word processors, one that made the term “word processor” sound quaint. So let’s begin from the end: The status of Google Docs today is like that of a long-tenured academic whose early ideas brought about a sea change in the field but who thereafter went on a lifelong sabbatical. It’s easy to locate its current place but more challenging to assess its original impact, because we’re just bad at remembering how life felt before transformational technologies. Released in 2005, Google Docs has long passed the magic phase and graduated into the boring phase, so critiquing it in 2023 feels both anachronistic and overdue. In fact, commercial aviation technology is so advanced that it made flying-a levitation trick if there ever was one-boring. Magic relies on the element of surprise, but the last thing you want on a transpacific flight is a surprise from the engine or a surprise passenger in the cockpit. But if you agree with Dan McKinley’s quietly influential essay “ Choose Boring Technology,” the desired end state of technologies isn’t to keep being magical but to become boring. The cliché has it that sufficiently advanced technologies are indistinguishable from magic.
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