Fluency, Fluidity, and Word Processing  

Despite the above maxim, numerous studies have been conducted over the past five years to determine whether student compositions improve significantly with the use of a computer. As Gail Hawisher (summarizing Seymour Papert) suggests, our field is so new that we seem lobe in a technoúcentric phase comparable to the egocentric phase through which Piaget’s children must pass on the way to maturity. We are searching for “THE effect” of the computer on the product (the text) rather than “the effects” of the computer both on the writer and on the context in which the product is produced. We have already passed judgment on what the computer should do (improve the product) rather than investigate what it does do. Thus, the results of the studies conducted to date appear contradictory.

Boiarsky, Carolyn. JAC (1991). Articles>Rhetoric>Computers and Writing