The latest digital tools, though, not only mimic the draft, as Photoshop's layers do, they are redefining the draft entirely. Richard Powers, author of Galatea 2.2 and other novels that deal with the imposition of the digital realm upon the very physical plane of humanity, has forsaken paper entirely. He writes everything on the computer. Built into Microsoft's ubiquitous Office 97, it allows Powers to manipulate, in ways previously impossible, the numerous different outlines he creates for a novel. With the outline processor, with linking and embedding, you can begin to think spatially.
Meaning is altered by the ordering and reordering of items, without any loss.
Related ideas no longer have to occupy the same space, or any space. The draft is freed from the limitations of the physical, two-dimensional page. Powers is not the only one to find liberation at the computer. George Lucas, by making modest additions and changes to his Star Wars trilogy, has placed himself at the vanguard of artists using digital tools to reinvent the ways they work. You work on it for a bit, then you stand back and look at it and add some more onto it, then stand back and look at it some more.