As several people have already touched on, one of the primary unifying factors that seems to tie today’s readings together is the fact that they were all written in the 80s, a time during which the use of computers in the composition classroom was a relatively new thing. Indeed, Dinan, Gagnon, and Taylor’s piece “Integrating Computers into the Writing Classroom: Some Guidelines” works off the assumption that this new situation is a fear-inducing—or, perhaps, something more like fear-intensifying—one, in that the use of the computer in the classroom, they argue, has the potential to compound the fears with which students may already enter, including “fear of exposure, fear of disapproval, fear of failure” (33).

This context and these assumptions have, of course, evolved a lot, and it is probably fairly safe to say that a good amount of our students grew up with these technologies both in the classroom and in their homes (and pockets). As such, the guidelines detailed by Dinan, Gagnon, and Taylor (and the insights that Wayne Moore highlights in “Word Processing in First-Year Comp” as well) may seem dated. But that also doesn’t mean that all of our students have grown up with today’s technologies in the same ways (or at similar levels), that the context has evolved as much as we might think, or that the insights we might glean from today’s readings, then, cannot be helpful for us when thinking about our own classrooms or our own considerations of computers and language.

For instance, one thing I’m struck by is Moore’s argument that “beginning writers stand to gain the most from the use of word processing” (55). Such a claim, whether true or not, has me thinking about the idea of the computer as some sort of hierarchical measuring device; do certain people have more to gain—or, conversely, more to lose—in the pedagogical use of computers? If so, what does this say about the computer and the manner in which it converses with our existing social and cultural structures? And how might this also expand the way we think about things like privilege and accessibility?

Perhaps Malachowski’s “Composing and Computing by the Writer with Head Trauma” lends itself best (for me, at least) to expanding the conversation about such questions. And at the risk of making things overly or unnecessarily personal (in which case, I apologize for my moment of self-absorption), this particular reading has brought my own mother to mind, since my mom had a stroke a few years ago at the age of forty-eight. Thankfully, she has recovered tremendously (which is something for which my whole family feels very lucky), but she does, at times, have difficulty with language and has lost a lot of the mobility in her right arm. Ultimately, though, I find that Malachowski’s piece converses with my mother’s situation not just because my mom had a stroke but because she had it while she was at school (and I mean this in both the literal and figurative senses because my mom had the stroke while she was at the writing center at the university at which she is currently an undergraduate student).

My mom, like Malachowski’s M.D., often becomes frustrated by the process of writing, by the extended amount of time this process now takes for her, and by the fact that she cannot call to mind certain words. It has, for me, been interesting to witness the manner in which she utilizes various technologies to accommodate her new processes, to help alleviate some of these frustrations, and to observe that such technologies have, in part, contributed to her ability to continue with her studies. Yet, such technologies do not necessarily eliminate all the problems my mom faces, including the fact that she often feels too embarrassed to ask for extra time or other accommodations in the event, for example, of a written exam. While my mom’s embarrassment stems from a host of different reasons, I wonder how her example—as well as how it converses with Malachowski’s discussion of head-trauma patients and writing as a discipline—might speak to systems of stigmatization and privilege, the manner in which such systems are augmented by technologies, and the manner in which our pedagogies can either uphold or disrupt these systems.