A Better Pencil: by Dennis Baron, Erik Lemus

         Times have quickly been shifting and the tools and technologies that have been used for centuries are now becoming for advanced in the terms that there is much more that use for such technologies. For example, for those people who like to idealize the good old days where everything had to be written by hand either using a pen or pencil. These are the days when writing a paper for a class was literally a mission to get done. If using a technology such as a pen there was no room for mistakes. If there was a mistake or misspelled word there was only two options to choose from either you started all over or having whiteout was very use full. Even with the use of whiteout makes the paper look less clean and professional with such marking still visible in the paper. One of the other option was with a pencil, but most of the times writing with a pencil was just for draft and not used as a final. But when pencil was being used there was the option to erase some mistakes the paper might have. The good old days when texting, emails, social network or really any other website online was still not on full access to everyone. There was no bombardment of spams such as texts, emails, and social network notifications.  

            One of the things that Baron does successfully in this text is taking this idealization and very clearly and usefully analyses this idea and places it into historical context. Baron records the development of the word technologies in a content that is broken down better and gives a much more in-depth understanding from the beginning of writing. Barons purpose is not necessarily to judge reactions to how writing technologies has shifted and made the world shift quite quickly in the matter of few years.  Instead he places them in context, he successfully shows the readers the doubt and fear of new technologies such as Facebook and twitter have provoked the digital revolution to provided America with new others making our nation into a nation of writers.

            Baron also contains some very interesting information in this book about Thoreau, for many people Thoreau has come to represent the anti-technologies idea. But instead Baron quite interesting tells a story about this man. He explains how Thoreau, someone who would sit in the forest alone to write in his journal latterly created a “better pencil” he was hired to work for his father attempting to improve the pencil. Baron also brings a great point, why was the pencil made? Well back in the day in order to write a letter or note to someone you had to have some tools available for you such as ink, feather, and some goat skin sheet for paper. Thoreau invention of one of the first laptops is a huge stretch for such claim Baron unpacks it, explaining how this made it available to use when on the go with no messy ink or feathers.