Writing Project

Part 1:

Both Manguel and Barron's articles speak about the historical aspects of writing.  Maguel's perspective is that of the historical development of books and the importance of their development over time to fit the needs of the era.  Barron's article talks about the development and changes of writing itself.  Throughout Barron's article we see the evolution of the simple pencil, which in reality was not a simple process at all, to the more complex world of computers and the Internet.  Both authors are showing the necessary and somewhat unnecessary evolutions of writing itself.  I agree with Barron that the uses of pencils have almost become absolute and do myself have trouble with spelling because of my over use of spell check on the computer which does it for me.  I have become so used to using the computer  that even books are obsolete .  I could not tell you how to look up a book in the library using the card catalog.  Technologies have changed our "norms" and pen and paper writing and libraries are not on the fore front anymore.  We have adapted into a new era where yes our writing has been compromised by them.

Part 2:

Stick being sharpened to a point on a rock

So I agree with most this was a difficult assignment.  At first I was not to interested in doing this project. Like most I take advantage of our modern "technologies".  But after thinking about it and really pondering what to do, I found that it was interesting to do and challenge my mind.  

I wanted to do something extreme and really take on the assignment literally and CREATE a new invention for writing.  But I found that most of my ideas involved modern things that were not natural in our environment.  So I went back to the most basic notions and stopped over analyzing everything.

My invention is simply using a stick and wet dirt, or sand, in my driveway.  The stick is natural to our environment.  I took the end of the stick and sharpened it to a point by rubbing it on the top of a rock.  This created more of a modern pencil and simply wrote in the dirt.  I wet the dirt slightly and found it was easier to write in.  I can sympathize with people from different eras, as in Manguel's essay, about their frustration on trying to communicate their thoughts, ideas, etc. without our modern conveniences of paper, pens, pencils, crayons, etc.

  

First attempt at writing in the wet sand- a jumbled mess.