From Pencils to Pixels

The gateway to literacy is a computer. I agree. Many people can read textbooks online now. Because of the constant used of technology today, most people do not write the way they used to. They may even have trouble with writing. Their process of writing is like trying to figure out how to use a new version of a phone or other real technological devices. A pencil is a technology. Without the pencil, we may not have half of the texts we have today. The pencil was before the pen and ultimately the start of any technological advances we have. Plato disliked writing because he thought it would weaken our memories. Thoreau is one of the greatest writers of the American Renaissance. He took a pencil with him to record his thoughts in his 12 day excursion into the woods. The telephone shaped communication technology by causing less face to face contact. It combined new ways of speaking and writing situations. This much like the affect writing had on communication. Technology has made fraudulent computer text easier to compose and promulgate across the bandwidth. Baron's conclusion is trying to say that if you let a simple minded being work with a computer long enough, you'll get the story, just not the scholarly one. This article defines literacy as a constantly advancing way in which the world is changing, including writing and technology.