The digitisation of our typographic mind

Just as the earliest printed books looked in many respects like manuscripts, in the early days of text processing the computer was naturally subsumed into the Order of the Book. As we are discovering the inherent properties of the computer it appears to be nudging us towards different text processing and reading practices. Large data collections and distant reading require different working methods, to answer different research questions, and are likely to lead us to value our textual world differently.