Great post, Bill! I'm tempted to write out my own "writing history" or whatever you want to call it. Really nice work!

My tech history is pretty brief. As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a successful science fiction (and later fantasy) author. Obviously, that didn't work, but didn't stop my 11 or 12 year old self from churning out "novels" on my Amiga 1000 using Scribble!. I, too, remember dazzling my teachers by submitting printed out work. The other kids thought I was a total nerd/dork and pretty much beat me up or sexually harassed me on a daily basis ("You faggot!!!" yawn), but you know how that goes--especially in the South, being seen as anything resembling "intelligent" is the kiss of death. I really feel sorry for kids in that situation, such as the hmong kids in Gran Turino who will probably never get a chance.

Anyway, I was happy with Scribble! for word processing for many, many, years, supplementing it with Deluxe Paint IV for "design" work. We eventually had Final Copy, and of course I dabbled a bit with Word Perfect in school. I also used a Brother typewriter with a monochrome screen a bit at my grandma's. I pretty much fell in love with Microsoft Word the first time I used it (must have been in the early 1990s), and haven't really felt inclined to use anything else since.

I've used all manner of collaborative software, and even wrote about it at length (see Wiki Writing). I love wikis, though obviously there not suitable for everything. I also like Google Docs a lot, though it's unfortunately also limited and just isn't as aesthetically pleasing to me as Word. What I do like about G.D. is that it's VERY easy to use; stuff like Sharepoint and Groove can be such a pain to get setup (especially since you have multiple people who need to connect). I saw a program demonstrated once called "moonedit" that blew me away; that's more or less real-time collaboration. For some unknown reason, it hasn't seem to catch on, though I keep thinking it's the natural future of this stuff.