From Pencils to Pixels

 According to Dennis Baron's article, "Pencils to Pixels," the gateway to literacy is the computer. In a sense I agree with this. The landscape of literacy is rapidly changing, and computers already are a huge part of literacy. Soon, they'll take up an even larger part, and may totally dominate the field. Writing is a technology in its own right because it is a way for us to organize data and information. The pencil is a form of technology, because it is a tool we as people use to produce. Plato argued that writing was bad for humans, because it could inhibit one's memory due to that person just being able to write something down to pull it back out later when needed. A pro of the written word is that it is a good way of keeping records on things, and it can "travel through time." However, written word inhibits physical interaction between people, and it can also be faked. Henry David Thoreau connected to the pencil because his family owned a pencil producing factory. He also spent many years of his life working on improving the pencil technology. The telephone, much like other communications technologies before it, was looked at as impractical at first. However, as its use began to become more widespread, people began to like it. Phones changed the way people talked, along with how often they could talk to each other. With these new digital technologies, it is much easier for a person to commit fraud. That being said, they have also improved our abilities to detect fraud. Nevertheless, these days people are much more skeptical of others and less trustworthy. In his conclusion, Baron is trying to get the point across that just because you are skeptical about something, doesn't mea you should swear it off;if that happened, we may have never seen improvements such as the telephone or the computer. Baron's definition of literacy is very much the ability to adapt. To be literate today, you must be able to transcend from one mean of communication to another.