When first assigned this assignment I was nervous to think about what I would write with if I didn’t have pencils, pens, my computer, paper, etc. It made me really think about how far our world has come from writing on slate or marble. I had a few thoughts while inventing my words that: “This takes way too long, I can’t believe how people would write it there wasn’t any pencils or pens!” It also made me appreciate the modern conveniences a lot more. I was looking around my house and my yard and thought about how I would write somebody a note or letter if I didn’t have a pen and paper, and then I saw the pumpkin sitting on my end table. I chopped apart the pumpkin and used the seeds to spell Fall Is Here. Fall is my favorite season so I had to include that in my message using “my technology”. I also used needles from the bush in my backyard, leaves, rocks, twigs, etc, to spell Books 4 Life. Books 4 Life is a program I am starting at the middle school I work at, an after school reading book club. I decided to use words that were very important to me, with things that are important to me, in order to make this project original and creative.
I can’t even imagine living back in the day and writing with sticks in the mud or writing on slate with a rock. Writing and technology go hand in hand, the pencil, as we have learned in this class is technology in itself. “Writing itself is always first and foremost a technology, a way of engineering materials in order to accomplish an end.” (Baron, 71) This quote really stood out for me because it struck me as completely true. Without writing where would we be in the world? We wouldn’t know our history, we wouldn’t have record of anything, we wouldn’t have newspapers or books, and I can’t imagine a world without the written word. When I think of a pencil or a pen I don’t imagine an engineer sitting over materials and figuring out how to make it work, but since we have pencils and pens someone must have done that at some point right? It’s weird to think that pencils took time to invent but they did! We have to remember that without the invention of writing, there would be no engineers thinking of ways to make writing easier in the first place. Writing is the first and foremost invention of our language, not the tools we use to carry out our thinking. “Of course the first writing technology was writing itself.” (Baron 73) Since we were small the alphabet was just something you had to learn, something to read and write. When I think about how it was invented, it makes me wonder how it came to be and the fact that it is English wide, blows my mind. These lines, dashes and circles mean so much to us, they form our language. We wouldn’t have any writing technologies, if not for writing itself.
Without technology our lives would be a lot more complex than they are today. Without a telephone we would actually have to find that person to give them a message or tell them of an emergency situation. The telephone was seen as a “transmitter of knowledge” according to our article by Baron. (Baron 79) Without the written word as a technology, we would not be able to communicate that written word on the telephone correctly. Without the telephone we would not be able to communicate with people that didn’t live close enough to see face to face. Once again, without the written word as a technology, the telephone, among other inventions, might not ever have been invented.
A lot of our writing technologies were not even invented for the everyday use that we use them for now. “Writing was not initially speech transcription, and pencils were first made for woodworkers, not writers.” (Baron 79) Another example of this would be the computer; it too was invented for math and computer operators, not for the common, everyday use we now use it for. We, as a society, turned these inventions into something we could use everyday. We saw the need for them in our lives and made the inventions for “everyday use”.
This project did help to clarify a little about the connection between writing and technology, writing itself, as I mentioned before, is a technology itself! When I had to think of a way to communicate without using pencils or any modern conveniences, I really had a hard time getting everything together. After I assembled the word Books, my cat decided to jump up where I was arranging the letters, and ran off with one of the leaves! I can imagine that happening in the days when pencils and paper were not available. While I was arranging the pumpkin seeds to spell Fall, my cat decided to bat the seeds around, while I was trying to take a picture. My fiancé had the idea to make mud, take a stick and write my words in there, but what would’ve happened if it rained? Nothing seemed permanent that I did or what I thought of doing, so having the technology of writing “tools” is amazing to me now!
“Writing was an intrusion, though an invaluable intrusion, into the early human lifeworld, much as computers are today.” (Ong 21) I agree with this opinion and I disagree at the same time. I think that the written word was definitely invaluable, but intrusive, I’m not sure I think that. Like I mentioned some above, without the written word, we would not know much about our world and history as human beings. We need to know the history so that we know where we come from, and sometimes that can lead us as to where we want to go next. The computer on the other hand, a lot of people feel this technology as intrusive, me I feel it’s made us all little more impersonal. I talk to my friends more online and through messaging on Facebook then I do in person and that is pretty upsetting when I think of it like that. It used to be we took the time to write letters back and forth and mail them, now we just sign on, type a few words and click “Send”.
Ong describes how Plato thought of writing as an “alien technology” and I would imagine that a lot of older adults in our community feel the same way about Twitter or Facebook or texting constantly on our phones. The written word has even become a new language to us in texting and some of it is just plain annoying to me. Some people don’t even text me whole entire words! Another language is being invented all together with the whole “texting language”, sometimes I actually have to text back and ask the person who texted me what they meant. That’s cutting it a little short in my opinion.
My experience with this project reminds me of when I used a computer for this first time, I had no clue how to express what I needed to say and I felt completely lost. My parents were over helping me gather materials and my mom mentioned that I looked panicky and a little frustrated trying to get my little bush needles and pumpkin seeds to stay in the position I needed them to stay in. I can imagine people acting this way when they first tried to write with a pencil or learn all the keys on a keyboard in order to type the written word. I actually felt stupid trying to find enough items outside in order to express what I needed to express. Can anyone imagine trying to do this everyday in order to making shopping lists, or write a note to a loved one before heading to work? I can’t, I wouldn’t be using our language much if I didn’t have pencils, pens and paper!
In conclusion, I think that without modern conveniences we would be in a sense, not in the same world we are today. A lot of things happen because of the past, and certain things couldn’t even happen if the written word didn’t exist. Some examples I thought of was the bank, there are many forms to open a bank account and checks to make sure you are depositing your money into your bank account. Thinking about how school would be was another interesting thought I had, first off, would there be school? There would be no books, no chalkboards or white boards, no pens, papers, computers! So would there even be school? Who knows! Another example I feel strongly about is the invention of reading for pleasure. Books are literally one of my favorite things to buy, I can’t imagine there not being books, like how would I fill my time? Especially if there were no computers, how would I fill my time? The written word, in my opinion, is the best invention yet.
