The Computer and the Page

James R. Kalmbach

From letterpress printing of reading slips in the 1880s, to students sitting in circles typewriting in the 1930s, to the desktop publishing classrooms of the late 1980s, and now to the Internet and the World Wide Web, teachers have been using technology to publish and share student texts. During this same period, technical communicators and other professionals have been publishing organizational documents using increasingly sophisticated technologies.
The Computer and the Page provides a theoretical, historical, and pedagogical conception of this process.
The emphasis is on publishing as a social and rhetorical act rather than on publishing as a commercial or technological process. Although technologies have changed, the social process of publishing -- whether in the classroom or in industry -- has remained remarkably stable.

"This manuscript is the first I have seen that ties the desktop publishing revolution to the writing classroom in a meaningful way. It is a timely book, a helpful one, a quietly exciting one. More importantly, it defies current trends of abandoning the discussion of technologies once those technologies are no longer new."
Patricia Sullivan
Purdue University

James R. Kalmbach is an Associate Professor of English at Illinois State University.

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James R. Kalmbach
From letterpress printing of reading slips in the 1880s, to students sitting in circles typewriting in the 1930s, to the desktop publishing classrooms of the late 1980s, and now to the Internet and the World Wide Web, teachers have been using technology to publish and share student texts. During this same period, technical communicators and other professionals have been publishing organizational documents using increasingly sophisticated technologies. The Computer and the Page provides a theoretical, historical, and pedagogical conception of this process. The emphasis is on publishing as a social and rhetorical act rather than on publishing as a commercial or technological process. Although technologies have changed, the social process of publishing -- whether in the classroom or in industry -- has remained remarkably stable.
	"This manuscript is the first I have seen that ties the desktop publishing revolution to the writing classroom in a meaningful way. It is a timely book, a helpful one, a quietly exciting one. More importantly, it defies current trends of abandoning the discussion of technologies once those technologies are no longer new." Patricia Sullivan Purdue University
James R. Kalmbach is an Associate Professor of English at Illinois State University.