Pencils to Pixels: post 9 Collin DeWalt

In the article From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies the author, Dennis Baron argues that literacy is always changing and changes due to technology.  There has been a long line of new inventions that shape the way in which people communicate.  His message seems to be that no matter what new literary invention comes around the effect is always the same, a changed view on literacy.  No matter whether it is the telephone, the television or even the pencil, literary technologies have influenced and changed the way people perceive language.

In every case of advancement in writing technologies Baron claims that there have always been people who opposed such new inventions as making literate society much worse off than the older technology.  Even the first writing technology, which is writing itself, was spoken out against such people like Plato.  In his summary of writing technology however, Baron goes on to argue "Pessimistic complaints about how new literacy technologies... are balanced by inflated predictions of how technology will change our lives for the better" (427).  The point Baron is trying to get across is the fact that literacy is always changing but not quite so in that it completely evolves into something new.  Rather the "old" technology falls into the mainstream and is no longer thought to be different than normal "literacy."  It is not hard to imagine that new technologies will fundamentally change literacy, instead it will be harder to remember how it did.