Writing with Technology Essay -- Writing Technology Education Writer E

Writing with Technology The task was seemingly straightforward; create a piece of writing without using a single form of technology. I didn’t think this would be much of a problem. I figured I could hand-write something instead of typing it or using a word processor and that would meet the requirements of the project. However, according to Dennis Baron in his essay From Pencils to Pixels the pencil is, in fact, a form of technology. Evidently, it was invented â€Å"by joiners, woodworkers specializing in making furniture, to scribe measurements for wood† (Tribble/Trubek, 42). Adding further to my obstacles, paper, being a created object, was not an option as well. This was turning out to be harder than I thought. After I pondered and thought through a myriad of options, I found it to be increasingly difficult to revert back to what felt like caveman days when writings were scratched on a stone wall using very sharp rocks. When I had thought it through to what I thought was the fullest extent, I began preparing for this project trying to use the same premise as the very basics of the typewriter; to imprint letters on a surface and make them visible with the use of a substance that stands out visually from the surface. Unfortunately, this premise did not work for me as it had for Mark Twain, â€Å"one of the first Americans to buy what was, in 1874, a new-fangled novelty: a typewriter† (500). Easy it was for him to use such a technology, but how difficult it was for me! I initially tried to create a writing technology without using technology by thinking of ideas that were detailed, complex, and difficult. My original idea, I found, turned out to be much more complicated than I had anticipated. I recruited my boyfriend and we wen... ...s impossible to complete without using any form of technology at all. Although I enjoyed the discovery process and the creation of my writing technology, I can’t help but wonder how inconvenient it would have been for Thoreau to spend his time in the woods crushing berries and writing with a stick. Works Cited Baron, Dennis. â€Å"From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technology.† Writing Material: From Plato to the Digital Age. Ed. Evelyn Tribble, Anne Trubek. Addison Wesley Longman. New York. 2003. Ong, Walter. â€Å"Writing is a Technology That Restructures Thought.† Writing Material: From Plato to the Digital Age. Ed. Evelyn Tribble, Anne Trubek. Addison Wesley Longman. New York. 2003. Twain, Mark. â€Å"The First Writing-Machines.† Writing Material: From Plato to the Digital Age. Ed. Evelyn Tribble, Anne Trubek. Addison Wesley Longman. New York. 2003.