The Electronic Scriptorium A thousand years ago, monks labored with quill pens to preserve classical works by copying them onto parchment. Today, monastics are again preserving our collective memory - using keyboards and computers. Five men in white cowled cloaks assemble before the sanctuary, leaning against the choir stalls or kneeling on the cold flagstones.
Prayer begins wordlessly, in vaulted silence.
Each morning, and again at noon, dusk, and nightfall, the brothers of the Monks of Jerusalem reach back to this tradition and out to the range of human experience. But technology, not spirituality, has brought me to the monastery. I've come to observe the postprayer ritual. An hour and a half after morning song, the monks boot up IBM clones with 386 processors. Silence and order, the constants of monastic life, still dominate, but for the next four hours, they will be punctuated by the hushed whir of hard drives, the clickety cadence of keyboards, the hum of the network server.