9. From Pencils to Pixels

Dennis Baron's essay does a good job of putting the computer into perspective in the long history of communication technology.  As computers become a larger and larger part of what people devote their attention to, there tends to be an awful lot of predictions about what effect this will have on general human development. People think that literacy has become monstrously different in the age of new media, but Baron points out that literacy is a constantly evolving notion, and that the computer is just one among many developments in the history of communication.  He points out that people have made assumptions about the possible negative results of each of these many technologies.  The fact that pencils could be erased made teachers fear that students might be less inclined to learn how to write consistently, and that the possibility of revision brings about it's necessity. There was the concern that the advent of the calculator would make students less stimulated to learn how to do the math that the calculators accomplish. One might be inclined to read Baron as though he is downplaying the influence that computers are having over the general population's literacy.  I'm inclined to take something else out of it though.  Who is claiming that those worrisome teachers of the past weren't rightfully concerned? Maybe we do write more recklessly because we are able to erase unwanted text. Maybe we loose some of our ability to revise effectively because we no longer train the ability to carefully formulate what we really want to say. The whole "if this doesn't work we can fix it later" mentality has perhaps made it's way into other parts of our lives too and the consequence is devastating. Computers and their internet lead to the accumulation of a wealth of supposed information, but what is going to stimulate members of the population to read this information critically and live their lives differently on account of their learning it, and furthermore what, besides money is inspiring people to contribute to it? Just because change is an inherent part of the evolution of communication technologies, doesn't mean that every change is always good.  We should look at the consequences of our doings and progress conscientiously.