Christine Spurgeon
Professor Steven Krause
ENG 328- Writing and Technology- Final Revision
Prior to creating my own writing materials, I had never given thought to the relationship between writing and technology or understood that the practice of writing is a developed technology. As upper level college students, most of us respect and admire writing in theory and practice and virtually all persons 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). Yet few people consider the mechanics of the creation of writing or reflect on its predominance as arguably the most influential instrument of humanity, one that has evolved over thousands of years. 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 , works studied in relation to this project, all examine the inception of writing and different aspects of its development. Beginning with tools forged from minimal natural resources and basic alphabet systems to the electronic formats available today, writing is a recognizable and expanding technology.
When I began to search for appropriate materials to use in lieu of modern amenities to create my own writing technology, I realized how highly convenient it is to write in contemporary times. 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, and later the pen and typewriter. Now in the age of electronic media there is a seemingly endless variety of computerized mediums available for use, and getting down to the fundamentals of creating these instruments enabled me to appreciate and question these tools as I hadn’t before. Walter Ong points out that “High technology cultures… are built on literacy of necessity and… encourage the impression that literacy is an always to be expected and even natural state of affairs” (Ong 19). Writing at its most basic, as this project was intended to prove, is not at all a natural or easy practice.
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, nor was I prepared to shed my own blood in the name of this 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 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. Even the now humble pencil “May seem a simple device… but it is an advanced technology” (Baron 73).
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 civilian people unfamiliar with writing would have likely considered the time spent carving or writing to be an inappropriate use of time and resources, possibly a reason that writing was not widely practiced for thousands of years. Baron dates the earliest Sumerian cuneiforms at 3500 B.C.E., though later mentions one of his sources state that no more than 10% of the population could have been literate in ancient Greece and Rome (circa 600′s B.C.E.), despite their advanced tools including skins, parchment, and papyrus (Baron 75). Thousands and thousands of years were invested while writing was cultivated as a progressing technology.
While carving and mulling all of this over, I was struck by how fantastic it is that any person considered fashioning characters to record anything at all. 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 (Baron 74). It is interesting to speculate that 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. 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.
Walter Ong says that “To live and understand fully we need not only proximity but distance” (Ong, 23). This project was 5,000 years of distance from the modern writing amenities available. After studying the aforementioned written works and the experience of creating my own writing technology from my surroundings, I have gained a completely new perspective. Writing predates the “value-laden notions of literacy, art, and science, of history and psychology, of education and theory” (Barron, 71) as a basic system and set of tools. As with all great and powerful things, it is important to remember the humble beginnings.
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>
