In March 1983, The Computer Chronicles aired an episode on word processing software. Host Stewart Cheifet noted there were about 150 different word processing programs on the market—a number that seemed staggering at the time. The episode featured demonstrations of Word Vision, a $50-70 "writing tool" that used traffic-light colors to help users navigate the interface, and AT&T's Writer's Workbench, a Unix-based system that could analyze your prose for readability, flag sexist language, and catch split infinitives.
What strikes me most, watching it now, isn't the primitive technology. It's a single line from the episode's introductory segment: "To what degree these language manipulators will change how we write as well as where we write remains to be seen."
Forty-two years later, we can answer that question. And the answer is: far more than anyone imagined, but in almost none of the ways they expected.
The Fears of 1983
The episode captures a genuine moment of uncertainty. The narrator notes that "writers disagree on what effect word processing will have on the quality of our written language. Some writers are concerned that computer assistance may promote dry, bland writing by diluting an individual style."
This was a real concern in literary circles. The typewriter had its own mystique—Hemingway at his standing desk, Kerouac's scroll, the permanence of each keystroke. Word processing threatened to make writing too easy, too fluid, too amenable to endless tinkering. If you could revise forever, would you ever truly commit to a sentence?
The episode's guests were more sanguine. Paul Schindler, a tech journalist, offered practical advice: "Don't buy more than you need." Jim Edlin of Word Vision emphasized that his software was "a tool meant for a person who is working with his or her own words rather than somebody working in a secretarial context with someone else's words." The distinction mattered then—word processing was still associated with typing pools and administrative work, not creative expression.
But the most fascinating segment features Warren Cool demonstrating AT&T's Writer's Workbench. This Unix-based system could do things that seem remarkably modern: analyze your text for readability grade level, flag "sexist phrases" like "manpower" and suggest alternatives ("personnel, staff, or workers"), identify passive voice, catch split infinitives, and compare your prose against standardized samples for technical or instructional writing.
In 1983, a computer could tell you that your text "was written for a 13th grade education level for comprehension" when "for instructional text it should be written at a 10th grade level." It could identify that 71% of your sentences were complex when the ratio should be different. It could, in Cool's words, help you "flavor" your writing—instead of "it was thundering," you might write "the lightning flashed across the sky."
The tools existed. The question was what we'd do with them.
What Actually Happened
The concerns about "dry, bland writing" and "diluted individual style" turned out to be real, but not for the reasons anyone expected. Word processing didn't homogenize prose through its editing capabilities. It homogenized prose by democratizing publication and creating new forms that prioritized speed and volume over craft.
Consider what the episode couldn't anticipate: email, which would replace not just the business letter but much of the phone call, creating a new hybrid form—written but informal, permanent but dashed off. Blogs, which would give everyone a printing press but also create pressure to publish constantly. Social media, which would compress writing into fragments optimized for engagement rather than meaning. The smartphone, which would put a keyboard in every pocket but also make sustained attention nearly impossible.
The "language manipulators" did change how we write. But they didn't do it by making revision too easy. They did it by making publication instant and ubiquitous, by creating economic incentives for volume over quality, by fragmenting attention spans, and by replacing the scarcity of print with the infinity of the feed.
The Writer's Workbench could tell you your prose was too complex for your intended audience. What it couldn't tell you was that your intended audience would soon be checking their phones every three minutes, reading in snatches between notifications, scanning rather than reading. The readability algorithms were solving yesterday's problem while tomorrow's problem was forming just out of view.
The Craft That Survived
And yet. Here I am, writing prose, and there you are, reading it. The fundamental act persists.
The best writing today is as good as it's ever been—arguably better, because writers have access to more research, more examples, more feedback, more revision tools. The mid-century model of a small literary establishment producing canonical works for a relatively small reading public has given way to something messier and more various, but also more alive. Writers who would never have found their way to traditional publishing now reach readers who desperately need exactly their words.
What's changed is the context. Writing now exists in an ecosystem that includes not just books and magazines but tweets and Slack messages and email threads and comment sections. The average quality across all text production has almost certainly declined—most of what's written today is ephemeral, composed quickly and forgotten immediately. But that comparison misses the point. We don't judge the telephone by averaging all phone calls ever made.
The 1983 concerns about style being "diluted" were backward. Style didn't get diluted by technology. It got amplified. The writers with strong voices found larger audiences than ever before. The problem wasn't homogenization—it was fragmentation, filter bubbles, the difficulty of finding signal in noise.
The Ghost in the Machine
What the Computer Chronicles episode anticipated most clearly, though it couldn't have known it, was artificial intelligence.
Warren Cool's demonstration of Writer's Workbench showed a system that could parse sentences, assign parts of speech, understand grammar well enough to catch split infinitives, and make stylistic recommendations. It could tell you your writing was passive and suggest you make it active. It could flag problematic phrases and offer alternatives.
Forty-two years later, I can have a conversation with an AI about the history of word processing. I can ask it to analyze my prose, suggest revisions, adopt different styles, generate alternatives. The "language manipulator" has become something closer to a language collaborator—or perhaps a language generator.
The concerns people had in 1983 about word processors making writers lazy are now being raised about AI, but amplified enormously. If a machine can write a serviceable first draft, what happens to the development of writing skill? If it can analyze prose better than most human editors, what's left for the writer to do?
I suspect the pattern will be similar to what happened with word processors: the concerns will be real but the actual consequences will be orthogonal to the worries. Nobody in 1983 was worried that word processors would lead to social media addiction or the collapse of local newspapers or the rise of influencer culture. They were worried about bland prose. The consequences were real, just not the ones anyone predicted.
What They Got Right
Rewatching the episode, I'm struck by how seriously everyone took the technology—and how that seriousness was justified, even if the specific concerns were misplaced.
Jim Edlin talked about "people-literate computers"—machines that understand what people do rather than requiring people to understand machines. That vision has largely come true, though it took decades longer than anyone expected. The traffic-light color scheme on Word Vision's keyboard seems quaint now, but the underlying insight—that technology should meet people where they are—became the foundation of modern interface design.
Paul Schindler's advice to "buy the least expensive package that has the features you need" remains sound. So does his observation that you should never buy software without trying it first, "like an automobile."
And the Writer's Workbench's focus on readability, on matching prose to audience, on catching patterns that undermine clarity—that concern has become more relevant, not less, as we drown in text. The tools have gotten better, but the fundamental challenge remains: writing clearly enough that someone wants to read what you've written.
The Permanent Revolution
The producers of The Computer Chronicles understood they were documenting a revolution. The show ran from 1983 to 2002, capturing the entire arc of the personal computer's rise from curiosity to ubiquity. Watching it now is like reading primary sources from a historical transformation—you see both what they understood and what they couldn't possibly have known.
The word processor didn't just replace the typewriter. It merged with telecommunications to create email. It merged with publishing to create the blog. It merged with portable computing to create the smartphone's keyboard. And now it's merging with artificial intelligence in ways we're only beginning to understand.
"To what degree these language manipulators will change how we write as well as where we write remains to be seen."
The answer, four decades later: completely, in ways no one predicted, and we're still not done. The revolution continues. The tools keep changing. And people keep writing, trying to say something true, hoping someone will listen.
And the 1983 episode got exactly right. The technology changes. The human need to communicate persists. The craft adapts. It always has. It always will.
The full episode of "Word Processing" from The Computer Chronicles (1983) is available on YouTube.
