"From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies" Dennis Baron

Baron gives us an article about the different stages that all literacy technologies have gone and are going through. According to Baron, each new literacy technology starts as a "restricted communication function" that is only known by few people.  History shows that the first writings were used by tax collectors and the writings were used for such purposes.  It seems that writing wasn't intended for putting down thoughts and ideas or conversations and stories.  Several people, including the famous philosopher Plato, believed that writing would dumb our minds. Eventually writing did expand into these areas even though it was a long process because of so many hesitations towards it.  Baron states that writing itself is a technology because it does things that simple speech can not. Some examples Baron gives us are: writing can not show body expression; pronunciation can be confusing based on the look of words; and the tone of voice is lost in written text.

The physical technologies that Baron uses in this article are the pencil, the telephone and the computer.  Each of these physical technologies is important for the stages of technology because they each are part of the technology.  The pencil was created for craftsman to make marks on their work and later used for writing by scientist simply for convenience.  Eventually, this convenient device was used by more people and later on along side the pen.  The pencil has evolved tremendously as far as the wood used and the type of lead or graphite used. Even the rubber eraser has evolved from a stand-alone to one clamped onto the pencil.  The telephone is considered a literacy technology by Baron because it is one of speech.  People had to learn a new way of speaking in order to communicate over the phone because they didn't have the use of body language and facial expressions.  This way of speech involved more of the tonal and word usage of the language.

Finally, is the computer literacy technology.  Just like writing and the pencil the computer was not intended for writing.  Baron states that the computer was created to handle complex math problems.  Eventually the technology became more advanced and over several years it has evolved to become one of the most widely used technologies to use for writing and reading.  Along with the internet the computer itself has revolutionized the literacy technologies.  It is perhaps one of the biggest creations since writing itself was discovered.  Baron believes that we face several issues with this new technology before it can become authentic.  Several of the things put on the web can be corrupted and we face the problem of finding out ways to sort out the truth from falsified ideas or facts.

Is Baron against computer aged technology?  It isn't very clear to me; however, I do believe that we are still a long way from figuring out what is authentic and what isn't, but I believe that the internet has great potential to becoming a great literary source and/or tool.