Erasures on an architectural sketch are just-visible evidence of similar processes and potential results. Photoshop 2.5, released in 1993, was one of the more sophisticated image processing programs of the time. To be sure, one could save each revision of an image separately, but that is a different thing altogether. Because earlier elements are not eradicated, but shifted to the margins, his new ideas are free to build on this previous work. Such adaptations and workarounds have demonstrated to software companies that users of any kind of creative tools need to keep the past in mind, if not in sight.
Revisions stack up, like on layers of tracing paper, without obliterating previous versions.
It can tell you who did what to what and when they did it. 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.