Review of Baron’s “From Pencils to Pixels”
Baron, Dennis. "From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies." Passions,
Pedagogies and 21st Century Technologies. Ed. Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe.
Logan: Utah State UP, 1999. 15-33.
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In his thought-provoking and highly readable essay “From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages
of Literacy Technologies,” Dennis Baron argues that the contemporary public’s
ambivalent attitude toward the computer as a writing tool has far less to do with the idea
of using computers per se, or even with the actual ways in which computers are changing
our conceptions of literacy, than it does with the simple fact that they represent a new
writing technology which threatens/promises to replace technologies to which we are
currently habituated.
Baron observes that “other literacy technologies, including writing itself, were [also]
initially met with suspicion as well as enthusiasm” (17). The suspicion of which Baron
speaks has partly to do with issues of ethos, authorship, authentication, and fraud; he
discusses, for example, the relative difficulty (as compared to printed and bound
documents) of tracing electronic texts to their original source and perceived and real
problems with the dependability and preservability/integrity of such texts over time, with
validating electronic signatures, and with determining the credibility of online
information. Baron notes, however, that similar suspicions surrounded the introduction
of the typewriter in the 1930s (19); and I’d add that further back historically, these
suspicions certainly played a part in the transition from scribal to print culture in the 16th
and 17th centuries and even, as Baron also mentions, into the original shift from orality to
writing as the dominant form of public literacy (18).1
Another factor, according to Baron, in the public’s suspicious reception of emerging
literacy technologies, is the difficulty of sufficiently replicating, with the new technology,
existing literacy processes, products, and paradigms. While Baron notes that, inevitably,
each successive technology form eventually “come[s] into its own, no longer imitating
the previous forms given us by the earlier communication technology” (16), the
acceptance of such technologies by an initially skeptical public hinges on their capacity
to imitate “familiar functions…associated with an older, accepted form of
communication” (16).
To drive home the point (if you’ll excuse the pun in advance) that computers are “simply
the latest step in a long line of literacy technology” (17), Baron spends a great deal of
time in this essay comparing the introduction and adaptation of computers as a writing
tool to that of pencils in the mid 1800s. Neither pencils nor computers, Baron observes,
were initially designed or intended as a writing tool. And until refinements to their “user
In making this point, Baron cites Plato’s fear that writing would weaken our memories. This observation
complicates my understanding of Plato’s role in the shift from orality to writing as described by Eric
Havelock, who depicts Plato/Socrates as facilitators rather than opponents of this shift (Preface to Plato,
Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1963).
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interface” made using these tools feel more “natural,” i.e. more closely resemble the
writing technology in place at that particular historic moment, the public showed little
interest in using them for this purpose.
With computers, Baron notes, the development of WYSIWYG (in conjunction with
decreasing computer prices) was the interface refinement that psychologically enabled
the first generation of “lay” word processing users to come on board. And it’s only now,
with a critical mass of such users actively engaged in using computers to accomplish
familiar writing tasks, that the unique capacities and features of computer literacy—
capacities, for example, to add animation, video and sound to documents as well as to
electronically link multiple texts—which move well beyond what we currently
conceptualize as literacy, can even begin to be considered and explored.
Thus, in terms of adopting computers as a communication and literacy tool, Baron
contends that we’re only at the beginning of a process whose implications and outcomes
are largely unknown. His point is this: By viewing computers as simply the latest in a line
of writing technologies, and by looking at the historical patterns associated with the
invention and adoption of new communication technologies, we can alleviate many of
our suspicions and fears about the function of computers in writing, better anticipate the
far-reaching effects of this particular innovation, and even, perhaps, welcome the
contributions of this new technology to the continually evolving ways in which we think
about and use language in our efforts to communicate with one another.
Tracy Ann Robinson
WR 520—Computers and Composition
Oregon State University
4/9/02