Not a Pencil

“Not a Pencil”

Everyday millions of people around the world use some form of writing. When they send an e-mail, sign a check, or read a billboard these people are utilizing a technology that has been around for centuries. Like the wheel, writing is hardly ever viewed as a technology when compared to HD televisions, cell phones, and X Box. However, the way people write and what they use to write are more complex technologies than they seem. For nearly as long as writing has been around there have been those who have discussed, challenged and praised this technology, but these kinds of theories can sometimes be difficult for a literate person to consider. By trying to create a new writing technology, such theories become far easier to understand.

As part of an assignment for my writing class, I was asked to invent my own writing technology including something to write with and on. For my writing technology, I formed words with the juices of leaves and wrote on a piece of bark. To do this, I first needed to find a piece of bark that was big enough to write on and light enough so that the writing would show up. After getting a few pieces of bark from the trees near my house, I began experimenting by printing on them with the leaves from a houseplant. I did this by twisting one end of the leaf and smearing it onto the bark. Once I figured out the bark that worked the best, I wrote the words “Not a pencil.” I wrote this for two reasons. One reason is because it pointed out another writing technology that people rarely consider, the pencil. Secondly, it referenced the emphasis Denis Baron puts on the pencil in his article, “From Pencils to Pixels.”

How “good” my writing technology came out is dif...

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...iting works the same way. My own experience with leaf juice and bark was a crude type of technology that probably won’t extend beyond my own one time use. If someone were to build off of that idea though, and maybe create a tool that dispensed leaf juice onto a very smooth, light-colored piece of bark, then this technology’s application may venture into many unknown abilities.

Works Cited

Tribble, Evelyn B. and Anne Trubek, eds. Writing Material: Readings from Plato to the

Digital Age. New York: Longman, 2003.

Baron, Dennis. “From Pencils to Pixels.” Tribble and Trubek 35-53.

Baron, Naomi. “The Art and Science of Handwriting.” Tribble and Trubek 54-61.

Ong, Walter. “Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought.” Tribble and Trubek

315-37.

Plato. “From Phaedrus.” Tribble and Trubek 360-64.