D. Baron

In the article, From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technology by Dennis Baron, goes through the stages of technology and the ways it effected and changed writing. There are several stages of Literacy Technologies starting with writing itself. Plato was against it, worried it would weaken our memories. Writing first dates back to 3500 BCE. It is said that no more than ten percent of the ancient Greek and Romans were literate back then. Inscriptions that looked like pictures were used to communicate in the written form instead of letters. But more recently there was a big change when the pencil came out. Everything was no longer in just ink, although still to today, signatures and other more important documents are preferred to be written with pen instead of pencil. Also, typewriters transformed to computers making it different being able to delete what you have written on a computer. Some writers refused to conform to technology, sticking with their typewriters through the years. The written language takes on a whole new meaning over the spoken language. When things are in writing it takes it to the next level making a conversation into a letter. Writing is different than spoken because when something is says there are expressions shown with the tone of the speaker, their facial expressions and the stress of their voice. Writing was an amazing thing but it also came with some not so good things as well such as fraud. When the telephone was first invented, many thought it was an impractical way of communication, but now it is used in the day to day life and we do not know what to do without it.  The ways people live have changed significantly because of the changes in technology with writing and the language. When computers came out with a spell-check, teachers did not want to let their students know about it out of fear that they would forget how to spell. Now everyone uses it and people can still spell even though some rely on spell check.  The point of this article was to let his audience, students of all ages learning about writing, the way that technology has changed writing and the way we write today. It gives students a perspective of where writing comes from and a new appreciation for it.