Editor's Note

Anthropological Quarterly first conceived of this special issue as a way to address two related questions: first, what is so new about computers; and second, what have they changed about the practice and subject-matter of anthropology? After all, computers appear increasingly in both the public and private domains in which anthropologists work—examining rooms, refugee camps, rodeo rings, and classrooms. Moreover, computers are playing a more important role in the way we conduct our research, write about it, teach about it, and administer the institutional structures that support it.

All these intensifiers are still very much with us as we go to press, and they coalesce around a central concern: we are so frequently bombarded by the ostensible novelty of digital gadgetry and its omnipresence in our scholarly affairs that it becomes challenging for us to conceive of what about computers in the 21st Century—if anything—might be continuous with previous modes of practice. How did we live without the digital? And how should we continue to live with it?

The three articles published here address these questions, and I leave their detailed introduction in the capable hands of Christopher Kelty. However, I would like to point to two sign-posts. First, the reader should be prepared to encounter the durability of longstanding modes of prac-tice: plus ça change. Second, there will be quite a bit of actual newness that emerges at the end of all this ethnography, but it will look somewhat different from what the reader expects: we're not in Kansas anymore.

By collecting these three pieces, we hope to advance the empirical and theoretical analysis of the digital and also encourage others to do so; we look forward to ethnographic explorations of the simultaneously shifting and perduring aspects of what is increasingly coming to be known as this digital age.

Finally, Anthropological Quarterly would like to recognize the hard work and patience of the contributors, and of assistant editor Bonnie Dixson, who was central to the conception and execution of this collection.