Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :"Literary Studies," in A Companion to Digital Humanities
Computers are not used for the sake of using new tools, but computers can supplement the critic's work with information that would normally be unavailable to a human reader. Speed, accuracy, unlimited memory, and the instantaneous access to virtually all textual features constitute the strength of the electronic tool. By tapping into the ever-growing pool of knowledge bases and by linking texts in ways that allow them to be used as huge repositories of textual material to draw on, traditional literary criticism can profit substantially from the knowledge and expertise accumulated in the search for a more rigorous analysis of literature as practiced in computer-based studies.
Computers can do things that our brains simply can't do. They're like super-brains: for example, they can zip through hundreds of thousands of words in a second and find all kinds of patterns. They also have huge memories—and,unlike our own messy brains, they don't make mistakes.
The super-capabilities of computers are a great complement to the literary critic's brain. The literary critic has to figure out what to ask the computer to do, but then the computer can do it better, more quickly, and more accurately than any mere human could hope to do.