Christine Spurgeon
Professor Steven Krause
ENG 328- Writing Technology Essay
As upper level college students, most of us respect and admire writing in theory and practice and virtually all people write in some capacity in their everyday lives. Modern people have indeed interiorized the knowledge of writing so thoroughly that we are unable to separate it from ourselves or appreciate its effect on the way we think (Ong, 19). Few however consider the mechanics of the creation of writing, or reflect on its predominance as arguably the most influential instrument of humanity. After reading the selections from Plato’s Phaedrus, Dennis Baron’s From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literary Technologies, Alberto Manguel’s The Shape of the Book, and Walter Ong’s Writing Is a Technology that Restructures Thought, I am able to examine the inception of writing and it’s development in an entirely new light. Beginning with tools forged from minimal natural resources and basic alphabet systems, writing is a definite and recognizable technology that has evolved over thousands of years.
When asked to create our own writing ‘technologies’ without using contemporary writing devices, the reality of the expanse of these devices did not immediately register in my mind. When I actively began to search for appropriate materials to use in lieu of modern amenities, I realized how highly convenient it is nowadays to write. It took approximately 5,500 years for writing tools to evolve from stylus and stone to graphite attached to a stick, the artful crafting of books Manguel describes, later the pen and typewriter. Now in the age of media there is a seemingly endless variety of chirographic and computerized mediums available for use, and getting back to basics really enabled me to appreciate and question these tools in a way I hadn’t before.
When considering suitable equipment to write with, I tried to think of this from a minimalist standpoint and create from my surroundings. A lot of thought went into devising something portable, durable, and not immediately perishable. I first considered using some type of homemade ink on a surface, though there were not any deep colored berries readily at hand and I was not prepared to shed my own blood in the name of my experiment. I could not come up with any type of ink from natural sources that wouldn’t likely dry and flake away, mold, or soon fade from a writing surface. There were also not any horses nearby from whose tails I could pluck hairs to tie to a stick and make a brush. I soon abandoned the idea of ink and decided that carving into the determined surface was more enduring, though also much more labor intensive. Living in 21st century Detroit I enjoyed the benefit of a razor blade, though in retrospect the razor blade feels inauthentic. I should have searched for and sharpened a rock, like the Sumerians did.
The next step was to locate a medium. I tried carving into tree bark which easily broke apart, and was wet in places and had some bugs. Orange peels were a possibility, though I imagined would soon shrivel and compromise my words. I ultimately settled on lasagna, though I recognize the severe impracticality of using pasta as a writing surface. Lasagna is decidedly manufactured but I rationalized by telling myself that pasta was made of natural resources and has been around for a very long time. I successfully wrote my short message, though the carving was tedious and wore on both the fingers and nerves. Ancient people unfamiliar with writing would have likely considered the time spent carving or writing to be an inappropriate use of time and resources, a possible reason writing was not widely practiced for thousands of years. Baron dates the earliest Sumerian cuneiforms at 3500 B.C.E. Baron later mentions one of his sources state that no more than 10% of the population could have been literate in ancient Greece and Rome, despite their advanced tools including skins, parchment, and papyrus. There must have been a terrific amount of time invested by those who cultivated writing as a progressing technology.
While carving and mulling all of this over, I was struck by how fantastic it is that a person of old considered fashioning characters to record anything at all. I felt there were literally no convenient implements at hand nor tools that would seem to readily inspire the original thought to write. Though this spark of artistry is what distinguishes the human experience from that of the animal, it has been said that necessity is the mother of creation. According to Dennis Baron, the first Sumerian cuneiforms were records kept of land and tax transactions. It is interesting to speculate that these were necessary to secure business deals. These documents likely prevented inconsistencies that could have arose from the spoken word in business interactions. The dialogues of Phaedrus were highly concerned with untruths that could potentially be written, and affirmed the virtues of spoken communications. It could be argued that speech and writing are both only the “semblance of truth,” as Plato’s Socrates calls letters. Speech is also a recollection of events, possibly affected by time or circumstance. Neither equals empirical evidence or first-hand experience.
It is important to note those who resisted the practice of writing when considering it as a developed technology. Throughout history common people often distrusted written documents or were reluctant to embrace change, and many intellectual people asserted the virtues of the spoken word and denounced the faults of the written. Plato chronicles his immortal arguments against writing in his dialogues between Socrates and Phaedrus. Though this is somewhat contradictory as Phaedrus is a written work itself, the concepts and defense of the oral tradition are timeless. Plato firmly believes that written words and characters are inhuman, establishing a false reality for the readers that is not knowledge. Writing is also not able to respond, nor defend itself as a speaker can. Plato is perhaps most concerned that writing will severely impact memory skills, which are the foundations of true knowledge. Despite these and others’ arguments, one need only look around to see that writing prevailed. It may have begun as a product of necessity, but it was only a matter of time and accessibility until writing expanded from business to personal, artistic, and propaganda.
After studying the aforementioned written works and the new experience of creating my own writing technology, I have gained a new perspective on the development of writing as a system. Writing predates the “value-laden notions of literacy, art, and science, of history and psychology, of education and theory” (Barron, 71) and its progress can be charted over the course of millennia. With this basic understanding I now am interested in learning more about the development and spread of the alphabet and the earliest written languages. Writing as a technology is clear- I am now anxious to learn what people determined the codes, and first transcribed speech to writing.
Works Cited
Baron, Dennis, “From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies” from
Passions, Pedagogies, and Twenty-first Century Technologies, Ed. Gail E.
Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1999. 15-33.
Manguel, Alberto. “The Shape of the Book.” A History of Reading. New York: Viking,
1996. 125-148.
Ong, Walter. “Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought.” Literacy: A Critical
Sourcebook. Eds. Ellen Cushman, Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll, and Mike
Rose. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 19-31.
“From Plato’s Phaedrus.” Web Page.
<http://www.stevendkrause.com/academic/eng328/phaedrus.html>
