From Pencils to Pixels

From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies

Dennis Baron

Dennis Baron talks about how the world has switched over or is switching over to only using computers to do all their writing. Every one used pencil and paper or pen and paper and then computers came along and changed everything. Some people even depend on the computer entirely for their writing purposes. Baron says, “I readily admit my dependence on the new technology of writing. The computer becoming so popular nowadays could be a good thing or it could also be a bad thing. For example, the computer is much faster and more efficient than writing everything on paper and keeping up with all the pages and such. On a computer there is lots of space and you can save lots of writing without losing it somewhere. Baron talks about one experience when he did not have his computer with him and he needed to write down a reminder that he needed to get out to his staff by lunch time but he had gotten so used to writing everything down on a keyboard that he no longer felt the desire or need to use pencil and paper and he longed for the flexibility of digitized text.

            The first technology of writing ever was simply just writing. Now writing has evolved into so much more. We can write in several different ways. We use texts, emails; we write papers, make blog posts and write comments, and hundreds or other ways. Plato was a philosopher who actually spoke out against writing. He said that it would weaken our memories. That is not true though. Reading and writing has been proven to make us smarter and improve skills. That is why my dad made me read outside of school for at least one hour everyday.

             Writing did not spread very easily though. It took some time to get around. William Harris states that no more than ten percent of the Roman and Greek populations were literate.

            I think that this article was a good read and interesting because it talks about current events like everyone using computers and then goes all the way back in history and talks about how writing started.