It occurred to me the other day as I was editing a document in Microsoft Word that in the entire time I've used Word, there has been only one occasion when I took its grammatical advice. But I leave the grammar checker on just out of curiosity. What will the software come up with the next time it flags my text with those unnerving green lines?

Let's face it, computers just aren't very good at some things. Who hasn't run into problems with spell checking? I ignore flagged spell check items for the same reason that pilots often ignore cockpit warnings -- there are too many bogus ones, so that you become desensitized and trained to ignore them. In that sense, spell checking, which could be supremely useful, renders itself almost meaningless.

When we let computers handle things that people should do, odd things happen. I still remember the conversational skills course I received a press release about some years back, advising me that if I used its methods, I would no longer be "a boar at parties." I rejoice at the image, and thank the harassed PR person behind it who relied on the fact that "boar" is an actual word, and hence beyond the powers of even the most refined spell checker.

Just how far do we want to go in turning daily human judgments over to computers? The subject comes up because there is a new proposal that goes beyond getting us to write better. This one would help us read better. It comes from the fabled Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), and thus has clout, since PARC is where so many early innovations in computer technology became reality.

Suppose you have a huge digital text to go through and not much time to study it. One option is to read it on the computer screen; another is to print it out. The new PARC technology, bearing the odd name "ScentHighlights," is designed to save you time while avoiding hard copy altogether. It's based on artificial intelligence and could be thought of as a yellow highlighter with smarts.

Perhaps the document in question is a business report, or a research paper. You would approach it as you approach Google: Choose a set of key words that describe what you need to know. Then watch as ScentHighlights first finds those key words in the text, highlights them in pastel colors, and then goes on to add more highlights in gray that the program thinks are connected to the same idea.

Running their software on a book about biological weapons, the researchers found they could choose key words like "anthrax" and "symptoms," and find these quickly highlighted in the text. Also highlighted were relevant terms like "twinges" and"fatigue," as well as other terms the software assumed were relevant. The software also highlights in yellow entire sentences or paragraphs it thinks are particularly relevant to the search interest.

I look askance at nothing that comes out of Xerox PARC, and do think that for research purposes such software may be useful. But assume something like this built into future computers for daily reading and you are looking at a problem. We are training people to stop exercising their own skills of discernment and judgment and to turn these over to a digital surrogate that cannot perform as well.

The spell checker remains instructive: A press release recently announced that using a new program is "shear delight." I would have thought such delights were saved for barbers, or perhaps sheep farmers, but not in the brave new world of computerized text. So let us have research into how we read, but let's also be wary. Computers can be disruptive to habits of sustained thought that we ought to be cultivating rather than trying to replace.

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