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In 1992 Friedrich Kittler, in "There is no Software" (Stanford Literature Review, 9.1, 1992, 81-90), argued that by then executable code had been written so deeply into the hardware of contemporary computing and thereby absorbed into the workings of silicon chips that the concept of software no longer appeared viable. We may continue to use our computers to write words and sentences, but we no longer know what writing really does. As most of our writing, he concluded, now resides in microscopic circuitry and no longer in perceivable spaces and times, we in fact do not write at all anymore even when we populate our screens with a myriad of letters.
Written during what from today's perspectives represents the infancy of our ever- expanding culture of computing, Kittler's obituary on writing was and remains-as most of his work-provocative and outrageous. Though many love to hate what digital devices have done to written communication, it is undeniable that the development of microprocessors has led to an unprecedented explosion of textual culture over the last two decades, with e-mail defining new standards for the speed of mediated exchange and with text messaging serving as a virtual lifeline for an entire generation. And even though the proliferation of smart phone apps over the last five years indeed has effectively embedded software operations into the materiality of hardware configurations, electronic writing today is so much part of our culture of 24/7 availability that mobile typers frequently risk their lives as they navigate urban spaces while thumbing words into their virtual keyboards. Is writing really as dead as Kittler suggested? Have executable code and hardware really taken over...