Pencils to Pixels

Usually I read parts of an assigned article and jot down comments as I go. But this time I was so fascinated with what Dennis Baron had to say that I couldn’t stop reading (listening to) what he had to say until he broke into the section The Stages of Literacy Technologies. Maybe it was the fluidity of his writing, or maybe it was just the fact that I agreed with everything he was talking about. Although I think it was both, I believe that it was really because of the latter. We depend on computer technology an awful lot even to the point where some of us have a hard time using basic writing utensils such as paper and pencil. I believe that this word processing technology has physically rewired our brains (those of us who use computers the most) to literally “default” to a computerized way of thinking, reasoning, and generating ideas to the point where we cannot do it by hand. I wonder if cave men felt this way before history was recorded if it is indeed true that “…writing itself, [was] initially met with suspicion…” Under the heading The Technology of Writing, I thought that it was funny how one of the world’s greatest thinkers, Plato, professed that writing would “…weaken our memories,” when today educators believe that taking notes benefits students because “they remember more when they write it down.” While this article sends an unbiased message that technology is accepted and opposed by many, it still explains that the computer is a necessary tool to advance our modern-day intelligence and communication needs. Baron reminds us that the pencil, like the computer, while simple and basic, has been and continues to be as necessary and important as the computer. He continues to make comparisons of other technologies, like the telephone, to the computer: how they were both viewed with skepticism in their infancy, and how they create in their users some of the same positive and negative concerns. Another part that interested me was how so many people look at new inventions with so much fear that they (people like the Unabomber) will be willing to kill their makers or users rather than have these technologies exist. That reminds me of a Terminator movie I once saw. That makes me think...Do they really have a point???????