# What if William Shakespeare and Leo Tolstoy had been able to use computers and word processors? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 17, 2012, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-william-shakespeare-and-leo-tolstoy-had-been-able-to-use-computers-and-word-processors/637984 "2012-10-17T11:18:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Donnerwetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2012, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-william-shakespeare-and-leo-tolstoy-had-been-able-to-use-computers-and-word-processors/637984/21 "2012-10-18T06:51:35Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > The ability to polish every word without needing to rewrite the entire page might have slowed them down in the end. I know that it slows me and I’m no Tolstoy, but if I were then _War and Peace_ would not be completed before the heat death of the universe. I believe it was Kelly Johnson who said when asked about designing the SR-71 with slide rules, “If we had a computer we’d still be designing that fuselage.” > > To continue that hijack for a moment, I saw a bumper sticker once that said, “There comes a time in every project when you must shoot the engineers and start production.” Shakespeare was working against a deadline and I am not sure that a computer always helps. These arguments strike me as something grumpy old men always say when they are confronted with a technology that did not exist before they reached puberty. I find it especially strange how some writers of a certain generation are emotionally attached to their mechanical typewriter and think a computer is the work of the devil. Maybe 15 years ago or so, I talked to a retired judge who wrote articles for law journals. He had learned to touch type when he was a student, had used a typewriter all his life but steadfastly refused to switch to a computer. I guess when the fountain pen was invented, traditionalists complained what a horrible idea this is: Instead of having to dip the quill into the ink every few seconds and be given the chance to collect your thoughts, you would continue to write uninterruptedly for minutes on end, which can’t possibly be any good. ---
**Author:** ![Donnerwetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2012, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-william-shakespeare-and-leo-tolstoy-had-been-able-to-use-computers-and-word-processors/637984/22 "2012-10-18T07:03:26Z")
> [@Namkcalb](#): > > They’d be too busy checking Facebook to write anything That’s just the modern way to procrastinate. In the olden days, I would read in my (printed) encyclopedia and learn about things I absolutely did not need to know about instead of doing my homework for the next day. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2012, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-william-shakespeare-and-leo-tolstoy-had-been-able-to-use-computers-and-word-processors/637984/23 "2012-10-18T12:30:42Z")
> [@Donnerwetter](#): > > These arguments strike me as something grumpy old men always say when they are confronted with a technology that did not exist before they reached puberty. > > I find it especially strange how some writers of a certain generation are emotionally attached to their mechanical typewriter and think a computer is the work of the devil. Maybe 15 years ago or so, I talked to a retired judge who wrote articles for law journals. He had learned to touch type when he was a student, had used a typewriter all his life but steadfastly refused to switch to a computer. > > I guess when the fountain pen was invented, traditionalists complained what a horrible idea this is: Instead of having to dip the quill into the ink every few seconds and be given the chance to collect your thoughts, you would continue to write uninterruptedly for minutes on end, which can’t possibly be any good. Time for me to reread JRR Tolkien’s letters again, to get the details right. (Of course, an expert will shortlyl pop by to correct me errors!) I recall that one of the huge problems he faced in writing LOTR was the drudgery of getting each draft typed out. Then he’d make changes & need to have the whole thing done again. Others did most of the big jobs for him. But he typed some of his own correspondence; once, he apologized for using red letters, as the black half of the ribbon was worn out. At one point, he wanted an electric typewriter… I doubt he’d have had patience to work with the early, clunky WP systems. But I can see him using some magically supplied, well equipped PC–after some patient training. Hey, he could design fonts! ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2012, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-william-shakespeare-and-leo-tolstoy-had-been-able-to-use-computers-and-word-processors/637984/24 "2012-10-20T23:41:38Z")
> [@Donnerwetter](#): > > These arguments strike me as something grumpy old men always say when they are confronted with a technology that did not exist before they reached puberty. > … > Instead of having to dip the quill into the ink every few seconds and be given the chance to collect your thoughts, you would continue to write uninterruptedly for minutes on end, which can’t possibly be any good. I took a class while working full time, my wife worked nights, and we had three small kids, including two infants. The lessons were broadcast on a college TV station and the teacher required a one page essay every week. I normally fiddle with my copy so much on a word processor that the only way I could knock the essays out in the little time available was to use a typewriter. It forced me to think before I wrote and stick with what I wrote. ---
**Author:** ![Enderw24](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba9def/32.png) [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2012, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-william-shakespeare-and-leo-tolstoy-had-been-able-to-use-computers-and-word-processors/637984/25 "2012-10-21T00:13:33Z")
This reminds me of a section from Douglas Adams book: > [@](#): > > There is, or was, a poet. His name was Lallafa, and he wrote what are widely regarded throughout the Galaxy as being the finest poems in existence, the Songs of the Long Land. > > They are/were unspeakably wonderful. That is to say, you couldn’t speak very much of them at once without being so overcome with emotion, truth and a sense of wholeness and oneness of things that you wouldn’t pretty soon need a brisk walk round the block, possibly pausing at a bar on the way back for a quick glass of perspective and soda. They were that good. > > Lallafa had lived in the forests of the Long Lands of Effa. He lived there, and he wrote his poems there. He wrote them on pages made of dried habra leaves, without the benefit of education or correcting fluid. He wrote about the light in the forest and what he thought about that. He wrote about the darkness in the forest, and what he thought about that. He wrote about the girl who had left him and precisely what he thought about that. > > Long after his death his poems were found and wondered over. News of them spread like morning sunlight. For centuries they illuminated and watered the lives of many people whose lives might otherwise have been darker and drier. > > Then, shortly after the invention of time travel, some major correcting fluid manufacturers wondered whether his poems might have been better still if he had had access to some high-quality correcting fluid, and whether he might be persuaded to say a few words on that effect. > > They travelled the time waves, they found him, they explained the situation - with some difficulty - to him, and did indeed persuade him. In fact they persuaded him to such an effect that he became extremely rich at their hands, and the girl about whom he was otherwise destined to write which such precision never got around to leaving him, and in fact they moved out of the forest to a rather nice pad in town and he frequently commuted to the future to do chat shows, on which he sparkled wittily. > > He never got around to writing the poems, of course, which was a problem, but an easily solved one. The manufacturers of correcting fluid simply packed him off for a week somewhere with a copy of a later edition of his book and a stack of dried habra leaves to copy them out on to, making the odd deliberate mistake and correction on the way. > > Many people now say that the poems are suddenly worthless. Others argue that they are exactly the same as they always were, so what’s changed? The first people say that that isn’t the point. They aren’t quite sure what the point is, but they are quite sure that that isn’t it. They set up the Campaign for Real Time to try to stop this sort of thing going on. Their case was considerably strengthened by the fact that a week after they had set themselves up, news broke that not only had the great Cathedral of Chalesm been pulled down in order to build a new ion refinery, but that the construction of the refinery had taken so long, and had had to extend so far back into the past in order to allow ion production to start on time, that the Cathedral of Chalesm had now never been built in the first place. Picture postcards of the cathedral suddenly became immensely valuable. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2012, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-william-shakespeare-and-leo-tolstoy-had-been-able-to-use-computers-and-word-processors/637984/26 "2012-10-21T02:51:16Z")
Of all of The Writers of Who, Adams probably had the best sense of the big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey…stuff. [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2012, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-william-shakespeare-and-leo-tolstoy-had-been-able-to-use-computers-and-word-processors/637984/27 "2012-10-21T04:11:46Z")
With the advent of copy & paste, Shakespear would have been able to plagiarize (sorry, “borrow from”) a _lot_ more of his contemporaries’ work. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2012, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-william-shakespeare-and-leo-tolstoy-had-been-able-to-use-computers-and-word-processors/637984/28 "2012-10-21T06:05:00Z")
There wouldn’t be a tree left on Earth by now, after all the reprintings for typos and other minor changes. ---
**Author:** ![Daylate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9dc877/32.png) [@Daylate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daylate)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2012, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-william-shakespeare-and-leo-tolstoy-had-been-able-to-use-computers-and-word-processors/637984/29 "2012-10-21T16:54:42Z")
Well, from what I hear now, since nobody really knows how long digital media will last, it is very likely that we would have no original editions left of either Shakespeare’s or Tolstoy’s work. Actually, do we have any of Shakespeare’s original stuff - hot off the pen - still extant? ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2012, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-william-shakespeare-and-leo-tolstoy-had-been-able-to-use-computers-and-word-processors/637984/30 "2012-10-21T17:43:37Z")
With Shakespeare’s habit for making up words, My guess is that every time he sat down to write, after about 15 minutes of having auto-correct changing things , he would throw the computer out the window and spend much of the rest of his life in anger management classes. ---
**Author:** ![Donnerwetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2012, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-william-shakespeare-and-leo-tolstoy-had-been-able-to-use-computers-and-word-processors/637984/31 "2012-10-21T17:57:29Z")
Shakespeare would have used a curse generator: [http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Shaker](http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Shaker) ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2012, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-william-shakespeare-and-leo-tolstoy-had-been-able-to-use-computers-and-word-processors/637984/32 "2012-10-21T18:31:22Z")
**War and Peace** _Available for X-Box and Playstation III._ ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2012, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-william-shakespeare-and-leo-tolstoy-had-been-able-to-use-computers-and-word-processors/637984/33 "2012-10-21T22:11:27Z")
> [@Namkcalb](#): > > They’d be too busy checking Facebook to write anything Maybe Shakespeare. Based on the contents of his diary, Tolstoy would be completely sucked into the porno. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-william-shakespeare-and-leo-tolstoy-had-been-able-to-use-computers-and-word-processors/637984.md?page=1)