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

Baron Dennis describes writing as a technology today and that it has always been a technology. In the article, he says, "The development of writing itself illustrates the stages of technological spread." He is telling us that writing is deeply rooted into technology because it all started with writing. In the 1560's, John Thoreau and Company developed and distributed wooden pencils to a variety of people such as cabinet-makers, artists, note-takers, and many more. Baron Dennis says, "A tool so universally employed for writing that we seldom give it any thought." Even though Thoreau did not like the invention of the telegraph, he still thought that it was an improvement to techology but it was also an improvement to writing. He is correct in every way. Most people do not see writing as a technology, but it has developed with technology a lot. Everything that we have in technology today was in some form of writing at one point in time before computers, tablets and phones. We had all kinds of writing.We had different utensils that we used to write with, but the pencil, which had a piece of graphite, not lead, encased in wood, was not a writing utensil. It did not become that until the 1560's. The pencil was mostly used by joiners, woodworkers that specialized in making furniture which used the pencil to scribe measurements into the wood. At that time, pencils did not leave permanent dents in the wood. By the time Gesner became familiar with the pencil, it became widely used as a means to sketch, write, or take measurements by note-takers, natural scientists, and others. Then, the telephone came along, which did not go so well when Alexander Graham Bell was trying to sell his product. Samuel F. B. Morse was convinced that no one would want the telephone, Baron Dennis says, "It was unable to provide an permanent record of a conversation." It took a long while for people to find out what the telephone could truly do and accomplish. Once the telephone became established, it was a huge hit. News, and sports broadcasts were mostly passed over through the phone. The phone was a very useful invention. As technology became bigger, the computer came to reality. This opened up a whole new life for writing even though it wasn's meant for that purpose. Baron Dennis is trying to help us realize that even though writing wasn't the first thought when people invented these things, but writing became a huge part of that and that writing grew with the inventions of this world.