Baron--Dialectical Notebook #2

"From Pencils to Pixels"

For some reason, my prior Dialectical Notebook does not show up in the post, so here is my second attempt to make it work. The previous post also keeps me from editing.

Looking at the advancements it’s already made, I have a hard time believing that people are still against it.	The computer, the latest development in writing technology, promises or threatens, to change literacy practices for better or worse, depending on your point of view (423).
I know a lot of people that would not admit to how much they rely on it, but it’s not been that way forever.	I readily admit my dependence on the technology of writing (423).
Agreed. So, can we then assume that literacy levels need to be measured among both high and low classes since they are in different stages of literacy based on what is available to them?	After their invention, their spread depends on accessibility, function, and authentication (424).
I think our country capitalizes on this now; the rarer the product, the more it costs and the more people will fight over it. Iphone 5, for example.	Each new literacy technology begins with a restricted communication function and is available only to a small number of initiates (424).
It’s wild to think about what will be next.	My contention in this essay is a modest one: the computer is simply the latest step in a long line of writing technologies (424).
I bet that when the pencil was invented, people had issues with the fact that stories were not orally told as much.	The pencil may seem a simple device in contrast to the computer, but although it has fewer parts, it too is an advanced technology (426).
This is the reason my husband and I bicker while I’m here at school sometimes. Texts cannot relay how a person says something. I need to hear a voice.	Writing lacks such tonal cues of the human voice as pitch and stress, not to mention the physical cues that accommodate face to face communication (428).
Hmmmm…still sounds familiar with us for our classes.	Questions of validity came up because writing was indeed being used to perpetrate fraud (429).
Wow. I didn’t know this. He can be compared to Bill Gates.	Despite the silence, Thoreau devoted ten years of his life to improving pencil technology at his family’s pencil factory (430).
This makes me chuckle. How could it have been impractical if you can instantly speak to someone that’s miles away?	The telephone was initially received as an interesting but impractical device for communicating over distance (433).
Every technology advancement we make threatens more and more of our privacy. It’s scary when you think about it, and yet I still Facebook and save passwords in my computer.	Of course the telephone was not only a source of information. It also threatened our privacy (433).
This is funny, too. I can just see older people who were resisting the technology, just like my dad does today, shouting in the phone and cursing when they hang up.	People had to learn how to converse on the telephone: its sound reproduction was poor; callers had to speak loudly and repeat themselves to be understood, a situation hardly conducive to natural conversation (434).
I never really stopped to think about where Hello and Goodbye originated for phone conversations. Many people I talk to on the phone start with “yeah” and don’t say goodbye at all. I still find that rude.	Initially, people were unsure of appropriate ways to begin or end phone conversations and lively debates ensued (434).
Thank god they kept on. I am one that readily admits I rely on it heavily.	Only die-hards and visionaries considered word processing worth pursuing… (435)
I didn’t know that early stages of computer didn’t keep up with typing speed. I bet this was a big milestone!	WYSIWYG=What you see is what you get
That’s what I enjoy about this text, though, and what my students enjoy as well. The ability to question.	A writer’s reputation, or that of a publisher, predisposes readers to accept certain texts as authoritative, and to reject others (436).
Specifically in court trials. I think forensic linguists are very interesting, but regardless, I still handwrite poetry before I type it. The screen of the computer being a box is symbolic to what it does to my creativity. It limits it.	We have learned to trust writing that leaves a paper trail (436).
I just think this should be a slogan on t-shirts for techies. J	Even the pencil itself did not escape the wrath of educators (438).