A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital RevolutionComputers, now the writer's tool of choice, are still blamed by skeptics for a variety of ills, from speeding writing up to the point of recklessness, to complicating or trivializing the writing process, to destroying the English language itself. A Better Pencil puts our complex, still-evolving hate-love relationship with computers and the internet into perspective, describing how the digital revolution influences our reading and writing practices, and how the latest technologies differ from what came before. The book explores our use of computers as writing tools in light of the history of communication technology, a history of how we love, fear, and actually use our writing technologies--not just computers, but also typewriters, pencils, and clay tablets. Dennis Baron shows that virtually all writing implements--and even writing itself--were greeted at first with anxiety and outrage: the printing press disrupted the "almost spiritual connection" between the writer and the page; the typewriter was "impersonal and noisy" and would "destroy the art of handwriting." Both pencils and computers were created for tasks that had nothing to do with writing. Pencils, crafted by woodworkers for marking up their boards, were quickly repurposed by writers and artists. The computer crunched numbers, not words, until writers saw it as the next writing machine. Baron also explores the new genres that the computer has launched: email, the instant message, the web page, the blog, social-networking pages like MySpace and Facebook, and communally-generated texts like Wikipedia and the Urban Dictionary, not to mention YouTube. Here then is a fascinating history of our tangled dealings with a wide range of writing instruments, from ancient papyrus to the modern laptop. With dozens of illustrations and many colorful anecdotes, the book will enthrall anyone interested in language, literacy, or writing. |
From inside the book
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Page 24
... called the printing press an agent of change, but Ted Kaczynski was thinking about the computer, not the printing press, when he picked the targets for his teknofear campaign; for the computer has become the new agent of change in the ...
... called the printing press an agent of change, but Ted Kaczynski was thinking about the computer, not the printing press, when he picked the targets for his teknofear campaign; for the computer has become the new agent of change in the ...
Page 25
... called Luddites, after the weaver Ned Ludd, who may or may not have actually existed, and who may or may not have actually destroyed a loom. Ned Ludd, sometimes called Captain, General, or even King Ludd (or Lud), is supposed to have ...
... called Luddites, after the weaver Ned Ludd, who may or may not have actually existed, and who may or may not have actually destroyed a loom. Ned Ludd, sometimes called Captain, General, or even King Ludd (or Lud), is supposed to have ...
Page 26
... called in to restore order, the sabot story is not confirmed in the more detailed histories of the rebellion. A competing account, and perhaps a more accurate one, has disgruntled French railway strikers in 1910 cutting the sabots ...
... called in to restore order, the sabot story is not confirmed in the more detailed histories of the rebellion. A competing account, and perhaps a more accurate one, has disgruntled French railway strikers in 1910 cutting the sabots ...
Page 35
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Page 39
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Contents
3 | |
19 | |
3 Thoreaus Pencil | 33 |
4 National Handwriting Day | 49 |
5 Writing on Clay | 71 |
6 When WordStar Was King | 91 |
7 Trusting the Text | 113 |
8 Writing on Screen | 135 |
9 Everyones an Author | 157 |
10 A Space of Ones Own | 183 |
11 The Dark Side of the Web | 207 |
12 From Pencils to Pixels | 227 |
Works Cited | 247 |
Index | 255 |
Other editions - View all
A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution Dennis Baron No preview available - 2009 |
Common terms and phrases
actually American authenticity become began blog bloggers called century clay tablets conventional copy create critics despite developed diaries digital revolution digital text documents dord early editors electronic employers English ENIAC entry erasers Facebook Falun Gong fonts friends genre Google Google’s graphite graphology hand handwriting handwritten hate impact instant messaging Kaczynski keyboard keystrokes letters literacy look Luddites machines mainframe manuscripts memos MySpace never paper pencil penmanship personal computer Petroski popular printing press produce programs puter quill readers reports Roszak screen search engine server signature space pages teachers Ted Kaczynski there’s things Thoreau tion today’s trust typewriters typing Unabomber Urban Dictionary users wiki Wikipedia word processors WordStar writ writing on clay writing technologies written