:: 3 Works Cited
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Making New Writing


This assignment is for my ?Writing, Style, and Technology? class at University. The focus of the class is supposed to be on computers, Internet, etc. But for our first major project, the goal was to create a new type of writing technology. The catch was that we couldn't use common writing tools like paper or pencils. We had to use ?natural? items and things we could find around the house like food, paper clips, dirt, etc. And the finished work was to be a word or brief sentence using that new technology.

The idea was to act as an ?writing inventor? and get an understanding of the thoughts and processes that went into making some of the common writing technologies used today. Many of those evolved from using items in ways that weren't originally intended. For example, the first computers were originally used for complex math calculations and not for word processing, until later adaptations against the desires of many early computer operators who thought making letters as too simple (Baron 46).

That was the idea for this assignment: making words with tools not normally used to write with and to temporarily get beyond the normal practices we grew up with to understand how people in the past felt with the introduction of new writing practices. The first instruction that got stuck in my head when the assignment was first presented was the one about not using any ?man-made? things. Going outside in the cold/snow and digging up ?natural? tools wasn't a pleasant idea. But history has shown that making new writing technologies often turns into a ?dirty? process. In 18th century French, pencil-maker Nicholas-Jacques Conte had to deal with pencil graphite shortages by creating his own mixture of graphite and other material like clay and water (Baron 44). Replaying a task like that didn't sound very fun.

But I probably wasn't paying enough attention in class when the assignment was first talked about to realize that it wasn't that limiting. After carefully reading the instructions, it appeared that man made items *could* be used, but not ones that are extensions of common writing tools (paint, nail polish). That was a relieving realization.

Going in nature was then ruled out for weather reasons, and the search for a new writing technology began at home. My room was filled with papers, pens, and other school stuff, so searching there wouldn't have done any good. It's amazing to see how much we've come to rely on pencils considering they weren't originally invented as a writing tool; they were originally used to mark off measurements until them 1560s. (Baron 42). But today, giving them up as a writing tool, even with a rise of computers, would be hard task for many. That was certainly the case for me with this project.

An idea that was always in my head when I first really started to think about what I?d use was to use some sharp object as my writing tool. Some things I considered include a nail clipper, a broken antenna, and a pocketknife. Those were all available but were ultimately rejected. A pocketknife or clipper would have been fine, but they had to be unfolded, and that would kind of be a pain to do every time you wanted to write. The antenna idea was also tossed because they are too long and the sharp area of the breakage wasn't straight enough to make readable letters.

There were many things that could have been used, but it was a little hard for me to make up my mind about which. To be honest, I felt a little uncomfortable about changing how I wrote and the idea of this assignment still felt a little silly to me. Because of this discouragement, I put off the search for looking for the right tools for a while. Putting aside new ways of writing isn't an unprecedented to do. Something similar happened to Mark Twain as he delved into working with typewriters. After being one of the first people first to use one, he put aside for 30 years because he was frustrated with all the defects of his early model (Twain 501). But his actions are probably more understandable compared to laziness in doing a homework assignment.

So I finally got back on the hunt on the weekend before the class's ?show and tell? date for the inventions. I felt a little better about doing it (along with a bigger sense of urgency) and went looking around the house again for things I could use to write with. Part of the solution came after looking around in the tool area of my basement. My dad had a couple of these compact screwdrivers that would be good to handle for writing. With it, I could scratch letters into some kind of surface.

A little doubt came to mind about its use since it's not the most ?natural? of tools that could be used. It did, however, fall under the assignment requirements and it has advantages of being durable, small, portable. These qualities actually make it very similar to a pencil, which is bad in a way since it brings the amount of originality into question, but I put those thoughts aside for the moment. I figured that high usability is probably the ultimate goal of writing tools, in addition to being an attractive feature. When Twain first was first shown how a typewriter worked, its appearance of usability during a demonstration was one of the features that got him to buy one, even though he was tricked by the demonstrator with a pattern that made it look easier than it really was (Twain 501).

So the screwdriver as the new writing tool was picked, but then a writing surface needed to be found. A lot of ideas popped up as to what would be used to scratch words into, but most were paper based products, which would make it a too similar to normal writing paper. While I sat around near my computer area, I noticed that were a couple of unopened AOL trial disks laying around. They're always being sent here, but never used. So I got the idea to put them to use for the assignment. The bottom of the CD would be great as the writing surface for scratching. Again, some doubts came up about using these because they're such as advanced technology, but here they wouldn't be used in an advanced way so I didn't let it bother me at the time. I went ahead and tested the screwdriver on the CD. Creating text with scratching was relatively easy, but it was a little tough digging in the surface deep enough to make words seeable. In the end, it came out ok enough.

Before I decide to use this method to do the final paper on, some lingering thoughts still were in my head about if the items I used were a little too advanced. I kept thinking about what other students in the class might come up with for new technologies and thought mine might stand out a lot and perhaps not even qualify as ?natural? enough for usage. But time was running out and I didn't feel like starting over. Plus I did have the chance to go ahead and bring my invention to ?show and tell? day to see what my teacher thought first and then change my invention to something else if I needed. From one of our readings of a Plato writing, it's said that a god named Thamus stated "the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them" (Plato 361).

In other words, it's possible to have certain thoughts about something that you've made that other people might see differently. It's similar to how you let classmates review your papers since you might not catch all the problems. So, I decided to see what my teacher thought first before concluding my project was junk. I went ahead and brought the it in, and, as I guessed, mine used the most advanced tools. In fact, most people took strict ?natural? stance and used food and items from outdoors. But my teacher said my project was usable and that's what matters most(the grade that it).

In looking back, I feel I could have put more time into the project. I should have at least made an attempt to use something natural, like something from outside or some kind of food (I've got a lot of that at home). I imagine it wouldn't have been as quick and simple. But even with my method, producing words still takes much longer than most modern writing technologies, like pencil/paper and computers. It really goes to shows how great those tools are and how much we rely on their ease of use. It also reaffirms what happens whenever new writing technologies comes along. Early incarnations have faults and defects that take a while to be ironed out. And many that use these early models get frustrated and doubt whether or not they want a change in writing technology to happen. That definitely happened during this project. I wanted to stay with what I?d learned to do all my life and had to bind myself to adapt to a new writing process.


Works Cited

Baron, Dennis. "From Pencils to Pixels." Writing Material: Readings from Plato to the Digital Age. Ed. Evelyn B. Tribble and Anne Trubek. New York: Longman, 2003. 35-53

Twain, Mark. "The First Writing-Machines." Writing Material: Readings from Plato to the Digital Age. Ed. Evelyn B. Tribble and Anne Trubek. New York: Longman, 2003. 500-502.

Plato. Phaedrus. Writing Material: Readings from Plato to the Digital Age. Ed. Evelyn B. Tribble and Anne Trubek. New York: Longman, 2003. 360-363.