CACM’s “Mightier Than The Pen”

Because the Communications of the ACM has so much surprisingly good writing, it has become one of my favorite periodicals.  (I say surprisingly because CACM is a technical journal.)  Though the journal is aimed primarily at computer scientists, much of the content is accessible to a wider audience.  Take, for example,  “Mightier than the pen.” Communications of the ACM 52, no. 12 (12, 2009): 112.  [closed access, alas], Joe Haldeman's essay on how the complex relationship he has as a writer with both the computer and pen and paper.   I got such a kick out of the essay that I was moved to submit the following comment to the piece:

I identify very much with Joe Haldeman's "collaboration between pen and computer".  I had to think twice about whether I'd make the same hard decision of computer over pen if one had to choose one and concluded that yes, I'd do the same.  I would have wanted to read more about what Mr. Haldeman thinks a world of computers without "a fountain pen [writing] into a bound blank book" would be like.  It was only after a family member gave me my first Moleskine journal that I rediscovered what I had lost when I wrote almost exclusively on a computer.