Reading Response 12

Getting Ready to Read
I use pencils, computers, pens, and paper to writer.

Summary
In his essay 'From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies' Dennis Baron argues that everything that we use to write, including pencils, was at one point highly advance technology.  He begins with the pencil and how Henry Thoreau was the first American to develop pencils and a way of producing them that could compete with foreign markets.  Next is the telegraph, which Thoreau himself opposed.  When the telegraph was first blooming it was said to connect Main and Texas, to which Thoreau responded "Main and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate"(425).  Then came the telephone, which was doomed to fail, and finally the computer.  The computer is the most used literacy technology of today, but when it was first invented word processing was considered too trivial for it.  As Baron argues "The computer is simply the latest step in a long line of writing technologies"(425).

Synthesis
This article relates to James Porter's article "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community."  Both articles discuss the topic of plagiarism, although I doubt Porter and Baron would have the same stance on plagiarism.  Porter argued that plagiarism rules should be less strict than they are because all texts are related.  Baron fears that the use of computers will make it too easy for someone to steal someone else's work through the internet.

Review
I found this article more interesting than most of the articles that we have read.  To me it read more like a story than a dry article about writing or writing rules.  I learned a lot about the history of pencils, I never knew that Henry Thoreau invented a new way of making them.

QD
2.  I do not agree that this is one of his messages because of how he describes, throughout his entire article, how new technologies have fundamentally changed the shape and nature of writing.  For example, he describes on pages 438 and 439 how students can now use erasers on pencils so they have the ability to revise and polish their work.  Being able to revise is very important.  Also on page 439 he claims that "The computer has indeed changed the ways some of us do things with words."