How I Invented Writing Essay -- Writing Technology Invention Essays

Writing is, at its core, a technology. It allows us to take our thoughts and arrange them spatially in the physical world. Living in a culture where this practice is an every day occurrence, the physical nature of writing fluidly becomes part of our consciousness. This is what the class project exposed for me. Having to â€Å"invent† a writing technology forced me to see the importance of being able to easily put down my thoughts and work with them visually. At this very moment I am transferring thoughts into lines, shaping, moving, juggling them around on the familiar square format of the page. This is a process I wanted to allow for with my own invented technology. The ability to work with your thoughts and shape them, as an artist shapes clay or mixes paints, is the most important asset of writing. The project called for the use of â€Å"natural† materials to write up to 20 words. The first hurdle then was to try to find something as natural as possible. I had a little fun looking up the world â€Å"natural† in a thesaurus as a starting point for ideas. â€Å"Usual,† â€Å"normal,† â€Å"accepted,† â€Å"ordinary,† stuck out immediately. Writing as a technology has evolved to the point where it might fit with these words. â€Å"Innate† and â€Å"effortless† were the next two words in my thesaurus. Certainly writing has become effortless in recent years, with the advent of the computer. You can erase, move, copy, and write at blinding speed. Effortless is definitely a word I would use – but not for my invented technology. â€Å"Physical, biological, environmental.† These were words that were closest to what I was aiming for. With â€Å"biological† fueling my search, I went outside to scope out candidates to b... ...h, transportability, and permanence. Because of this its ability to communicate ideas is extremely hampered, and all the benefits of writing as we use it today are absent except for one. The goal I set out to achieve with my technology, the single quality of giving physical form to thoughts, remains intact. Works Cited Bolter, Jay David. "The New Dialogue." Writing Material: Reading from Plato to the Digital Age. Ed. Evelyn B. Tribble, Ann Trubek. New York: Longman, 2003. 75-86 Duguid, Paul and John Seely Brown. "The Social Life of Documents." Writing Material: Reading from Plato to the Digital Age. Ed. Evelyn B. Tribble, Ann Trubek. New York: Longman, 2003. 104-121 Ong, Walter. "Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought." Writing Material: Reading from Plato to the Digital Age. Ed. Evelyn B. Tribble, Ann Trubek. New York: Longman, 2003. 315-335