Computers, now the writer's tool of choice, are still blamed by
skeptics for a variety of ills, from speeding writing up to the
point of recklessness, to complicating or trivializing the writing
process, to destroying the English language itself. A Better Pencil
puts our complex, still-evolving hate-love relationship with
computers and the internet into perspective, describing how the
digital revolution influences our reading and writing practices,
and how the latest technologies differ from what came before. The
book explores our use of computers as writing tools in light of the
history of communication technology, a history of how we love,
fear, and actually use our writing technologies-not just computers,
but also typewriters, pencils, and clay tablets. Dennis Baron shows
that virtually all writing implements-and even writing itself-were
greeted at first with anxiety and outrage: the printing press
disrupted the "almost spiritual connection" between the writer and
the page; the typewriter was "impersonal and noisy" and would
"destroy the art of handwriting." Both pencils and computers were
created for tasks that had nothing to do with writing. Pencils,
crafted by woodworkers for marking up their boards, were quickly
repurposed by writers and artists. The computer crunched numbers,
not words, until writers saw it as the next writing machine. Baron
also explores the new genres that the computer has launched: email,
the instant message, the web page, the blog, social-networking
pages like MySpace and Facebook, and communally-generated texts
like Wikipedia and the Urban Dictionary, not to mention YouTube.
Here then is a fascinating history of our tangled dealings with a
wide range of writing instruments, from ancient papyrus to the
modern laptop. With dozens of illustrations and many colorful
anecdotes, the book will enthrall anyone interested in language,
literacy, or writing.
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