What’s Nature Got To Do With It? :: Writing Technology Essays

What’s Nature Got To Do With It? I am taking a course in writing technology, and the last thing you would imagine as a topic is how natural writing can or cannot be. Our teacher for this course had us come up with a writing project. We were asked to make twenty words or less using any tool that was natural and did not involve high technology. This means we could not use computers, paints, or markers. In discussing what we could use, the class quickly broke down the options. It appeared almost impossible. We got nothing. This is where begging and pleading for ideas came in to play, and perhaps our instructor is a little financially better off if someone offered him a bribe, who knows.. How could it be done? Why? What would we learn about such an unnatural task that would even relate to the topic writing technology? What I learned rather quickly was that these very questions were all apart of why the assignment was given. What at first seemed to be a pointless exercise really answered these questions in a profound way which I want to share with you today. My hope is that you too get a renewed appreciation for writing and it’s history. In the essay from Pencils to Pixels, Dennis Baron details the world’s journey from the use and making of the pencil to the computer. Barron states that the pencil wasn’t originally intended to be used as a writing device. There’s a bit of information you probably hadn’t heard before. Yes, pencils were actually adopted as a tool by â€Å"note takers.. ..scientists...and others who need to write†. They were taken from artists and adapted it for use as a writing tool ( Dennis Barron 44). And so, in engaging in my project, I found myself thinking of how I could adopt a natural tool and adapt that tool to my writing task. I first thought about writing some letters in water, but I could really find no natural container to hold the water. I could have used some sticks or some type of colored liquid and take a snapshot of it, but there was no natural platform to hold the water. This was not going to work.