Reading Response #12

          "From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies" is an article written by Dennis Baron, possibly for those who study the context of language usage (along with searching for the origins of writing itself) that talks about expanding technology beyond working on certain machines; a new and exciting writing development that takes "word processing as a given." (WAW 423). As an example, Baron looks at, from engineer Henry Petroski, the "development of the wood-cased as a paradigm of the engineering process." (WAW 426) Looking at the "paradigm of the development of literacy" caused by the pencil, he finds out that pencils went "through a number of strikingly similar stages," which consisted of "accessibility, function, and authentication" (WAW 424) once it gets past  
"a restricted communication function ... available only to a small number of initiates." (WAW 424) The result is that most people will eventually see the technological breakthroughs as natural means of working, despite arguments of various educators that deem the technique ruining already established crafts, either as masters (Thoreau vs. Telegraphs) or as members of various institutions (Math Teachers against Calculators).

          This method of looking as technology as objects needed for writing goes back to Deborah Brandt's purpose of "Sponsor of Literacy." In the article, Brandt mentions that "sponsors deliver the ideological freight that must be borne for access to what they have," (WAW 335) where various authorities figures provides the tools needed for someone to live, whenever it be a corporation or a person with power. Meanwhile, Baron says that his theories of technology "comes along and we are thrown into excitement and confusion as we try it on, reject it, and then adapt it to our lives," suggesting that their development is depended on how practical the objects crafted are, and if provides to be so, will go through various stages that will eventually end up be necessary in the lives of many. So, right away, the ways people approach writing is different; Brandt thinks the context of an individual, the sponsors, will influence him or her into what that person will have to do with the tool in regards to the contexts, while Baron believes that the battle for autonomic power over new technology (that will eventually become common place past those battles) and an already established methodology will eventually shape those tools into bare necessities beyond the complaints launched at those objects, resulting in tools that can be use in any sort of context. Either way these two put it, both authors seem to reach similar conclusions for writing: If writing was to remind dynamic for the years to come, the people has to adapt with the evolution of the world around them. The difference between, say, having good conversation skills and writing briefs for a local firm, or a telephone and a telegram might be grand, but the similarities beneath those difference--communication-- will continue to be the foundation of those conventions in the years to come, and the sooner they are aware of these changes, the better off the people will become.  

          If someone were to ask me what kind of technology I use, it would boil down to either of the following:

-My brain
-Pencil
-Pens
-Computer
-Colored Pencils

As far as I'm concerned, my brain is the main source of my writing, while any of the following is the substandard technology needed for the brain's writings to bloom beyond myself.

          So does Baron point about making it "hard to imagine new technologies as fundamentally changing the shape or nature of writing," (WAW 440) or in his own words, new technology really "promises, or threatens, to change literacy practices for better or worse" (WAW 423) has any meaning to the personal nature of writing? I wouldn't have any argument against the idea, and even going beyond his point that writing itself started off with the earliest Sumerian scripting "land sales, business transactions, and tax accounts," (WAW 427) Baron has no problem asserting its' audience of the advantages literacy brings to writing. To him, despite the frustrations previous master craftsman had to the latest writing invention (as seen with Thoreau's crusade for the ruling of pencil technology throughout the text), the idea of writing the thoughts of an individual (or facts for an instructor) fundamentally remained the same of simple economics of their time period.

          All in all, Baron's article proposes a topic that I never considered before: instead of treating a dull pencil as a tool as a mean to many ends, picture them as a natural step of an evolution process of writing. In other words, typing this post on a laptop might of been revolutionary radical in the past, but if viewed as one way, it's really as valuable as writing down notes with a Number 2 pencil. Such thinking reaffirms my belief that writing is simply writing; it doesn't really matter where or what someone writes their stories that'll get people's attention, but the way he uses his tools (in this case, whatever he uses to write it) to create a story that engages its' audience that does, or a conversation that grasps what the writer wants to express. But I'm sure everyone knows that, and if Baron's article anything to go by, this line of thinking will continue to be the prevailing thought of writing in the years to come. If I was to change with it to continue surviving, so be it.