Baron (1) A Better Pencil

     Dennis Baron's "A Better Pencil" seems to be an analysis of society's reception of literate technology. In chapter 1, he outlines the now mythic story of Plato's distaste for written language. He believed that writing would have negative effects on memory; while he is probably right, there have obviously been huge advancements since the emergence of writing. On page 4, Baron defends Plato's stance by explaining that real knowledge is learned face-to-face, and without that – like when we have to learn something by reading – we only "display an appearance of wisdom." I have recently observed this difference in my own learning style, as the things I learn from interviewing individuals always sticks with me longer and more powerfully than a similar story read in text.
     Written language is only the first of many innovations to receive skepticism relating to the development of our literate society. So far, through chapters 1, 3, and 5, it seems that the only invention to duck suspicion is the pencil (hence the title, I assume. If the pencil was the least uncontested literate advance in technology, then the rest of the book describes the "anti" response to each new advancement). The telegraph, the telephone, the typewriter – all of these inventions were at first ill-received by members of society. Our culture has obviously accepted and adapted to these technologies, and it has practically become part of our evolution. It becomes more clear after reading Baron's chapters that these pieces that now seem so flawlessly integrated into our lives were, at one point, a very strange adjustment for older generations.
     The concepts surrounding trust seem to have changed the most: "I want to look him in the eye" versus "I want to see that in writing." Baron uses the example of the telephone to demonstrate this. Apparently, skeptics of the telephone as a successor of the telegraph doubted whether people would want to share information over a line when there was no written transcript of the conversation. Culture has accepted and welcomed the telephone, but initially, there had to be a shift in the tradition surrounding the exchange of dialogue.