How is Writing Technological?

       Throughout this class, I've learned that writing is indeed technological. It's very interesting because most people don't really think writing is technological; they think that writing is one of the oldest forms of communication and that technology only refers to newer things like computers, iPods, tablets, etc. However, this is not the case. Readings by Dennis Baron, Cynthia Selfe, and Walter J. Ong address the fact that writing counts as technology. Writing as a technological tool is one of my favorite topics because it is incredibly relevant. As technology advances, we as writers have to adapt to its newest forms, and technology is advancing at a rapid rate.
     "From Pencils to Pixels" by Dennis Baron addresses writing as technology. He states that when people first began to write, they were probably seen as abnormal because they were using an advanced form of technology that wasn't yet popular. Baron writes, "We cannot be exactly sure why writing was invented, but just as the gurus of today's technology are called computer geeks, it's possible that the first writers also seemed like a bunch of oddballs to the early Sumerians, who might have called them cuneiform geeks." Since speaking was the primary way of getting ideas across originally, the people who invented writing might have been looked at in a way that denoted above average intelligence. I know I look at technology experts in today's world that way. Something that I found extremely interesting in "From Pencils to Pixels" is the notion that pencils are considered an advanced form of technology. Baron writes, "The pencil may seem a simple device in contrast to the computer, but although it has fewer parts, it too is an advanced technology." We think that pencils are so old fashioned since we now have complicated electronic devices that can do virtually everything for us, but at the time they were created, pencils were viewed just like we view high tech computers nowadays. Pencils were seen as revolutionary when they were first invented, just like the first computer was seen when it was invented because it was the first of its kind. I wonder if people who are "anti-technology" in today's society would give technology a chance after reading this article, seeing as the tools they currently use and see as old-fashioned (like pencils) were once new and are considered a form of technology. 

       In her article "Technology and Literacy: A Story About the Perils of Not Paying Attention," Cynthia Selfe claims that composition teachers must pay attention to technology for the sake of their students. Literacy and technology are linked, so if teachers don't pay attention to technology, they are essentially responsible for illiteracy among their students. Selfe writes, "Composition teachers, language arts teachers, and other literacy specialists need to recognize that the relevance of technology in the English studies disciplines is not simply a matter of helping students work effectively with communication software and hardware, but, rather, also a matter of helping them to understand and to be able to assess — to pay attention to — the social, economic, and pedagogical implications of new communication technologies and technological initiatives that affect their lives."

However, Selfe states that there is a cultural and economic divide and that even though a national program for technological literacy could provide people with equal access to better education (and therefore upward mobility and economic prosperity), computers still tend to get distributed unevenly among people of ethnic minorities and a lower socio-economic standing and people of ethnic majorities and a higher socio-economic standing. Technology being distributed unevenly to people of ethnic minorities leads to a disadvantage in their future careers. Selfe states, "In other words, the poorer you are and the less educated you are in this country — both of which conditions are correlated with race — the less likely you are to have access to computers and to high-paying, high-tech jobs in the American workplace." Today's society places a very high value on being technologically literate and whether you are [literate] or not depends on your schooling. 

       Lastly, Walter J. Ong further explores how writing is a form of technology that replaced our natural form of communication, which is oral communication, in "Writing Is a Technology that Restructures Thought." One difference between writing and oral communication is that when people are orally communicating, there is a high likelihood that they are in proximity to one another (unless they are communicating via Skype or telephone), but writing distances the writer and the reader. When someone reads something someone else has written, there is a chance the writer could be in the same room, but there is a higher chance that the writer is thousands of miles away, or even dead. Writing is just as unnatural as people perceive computers to be. Ong writes, "Although we take writing so much for granted as to forget that it is technology, writing is in a way the most drastic of the three technologies of the word. It initiated what printing and electronics only continued, the physical reduction of dynamic sound to quiescent space, the separation of the word from the living present, where alone real, spoken words exist." If writing was never invented, we wouldn't have the technologies we have today. Writing is an invention that changed how we as a society operate.