What do you think?
Rate this book
A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution
Computers, now the writer's tool of choice, are still blamed by skeptics for a variety of ills, from speeding writing up to the point of recklessness, to complicating or trivializing the writing process, to destroying the English language itself.
A Better Pencil puts our complex, still-evolving hate-love relationship with computers and the internet into perspective, describing how the digital revolution influences our reading and writing practices, and how the latest technologies differ from what came before. The book explores our use of computers as writing tools in light of the history of communication technology, a history of how we love, fear, and actually use our writing technologies--not just computers, but also typewriters, pencils, and clay tablets. Dennis Baron shows that virtually all writing implements--and even writing itself--were greeted at first with anxiety and outrage: the printing press disrupted the "almost spiritual connection" between the writer and the page; the typewriter was "impersonal and noisy" and would "destroy the art of handwriting." Both pencils and computers were created for tasks that had nothing to do with writing. Pencils, crafted by woodworkers for marking up their boards, were quickly
repurposed by writers and artists. The computer crunched numbers, not words, until writers saw it as the next writing machine. Baron also explores the new genres that the computer has launched: email, the instant message, the web page, the blog, social-networking pages like MySpace and Facebook, and communally-generated texts like Wikipedia and the Urban Dictionary, not to mention YouTube.
Here then is a fascinating history of our tangled dealings with a wide range of writing instruments, from ancient papyrus to the modern laptop. With dozens of illustrations and many colorful anecdotes, the book will enthrall anyone interested in language, literacy, or writing.
A Better Pencil puts our complex, still-evolving hate-love relationship with computers and the internet into perspective, describing how the digital revolution influences our reading and writing practices, and how the latest technologies differ from what came before. The book explores our use of computers as writing tools in light of the history of communication technology, a history of how we love, fear, and actually use our writing technologies--not just computers, but also typewriters, pencils, and clay tablets. Dennis Baron shows that virtually all writing implements--and even writing itself--were greeted at first with anxiety and outrage: the printing press disrupted the "almost spiritual connection" between the writer and the page; the typewriter was "impersonal and noisy" and would "destroy the art of handwriting." Both pencils and computers were created for tasks that had nothing to do with writing. Pencils, crafted by woodworkers for marking up their boards, were quickly
repurposed by writers and artists. The computer crunched numbers, not words, until writers saw it as the next writing machine. Baron also explores the new genres that the computer has launched: email, the instant message, the web page, the blog, social-networking pages like MySpace and Facebook, and communally-generated texts like Wikipedia and the Urban Dictionary, not to mention YouTube.
Here then is a fascinating history of our tangled dealings with a wide range of writing instruments, from ancient papyrus to the modern laptop. With dozens of illustrations and many colorful anecdotes, the book will enthrall anyone interested in language, literacy, or writing.
259 pages, Hardcover
First published August 26, 2009
8 people are currently reading
80 people want to read
About the author
Dennis Baron
16 books9 followersDennis Baron is professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois and has written books on the technologies of communication; language policy and reform; language legislation and minority language rights; gender issues in language; and the history and present state of the English language. He's the author of the blog "the Web of Language". He's regularly quoted in the news and appears frequently on radio and t.v. discussing the English language and the digital revolution.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 2, 2023
it was for school, but 50% interesting, 50% boring and a lil outdated haha
May 30, 2016
A Better Pencil spends two-third of its brief length being an utterly fascinating book, then veers—abruptly and without warning—into being a dull, derivative, and outdated one. Its original, interesting self briefly reemerges in the conclusion: a reminder of lost opportunities that intensifies, rather than diminishes, the sense of loss.
The first half of the book is an argument that the technology with which we write has always affected the way we write. Baron makes the point by considering first the pencil (and, more briefly, the pen), then the typewriter, next the dedicated word processor, and finally the word-processing program. It’s a deceptively simple argument, but a crucially important one. As technologies—the machines becoming familiar, and the use of them routine—we collectively forget that they are technologies that were, once, as revolutionary and disruptive as networked computers are today. We assume that the use of them represents some kind of eternal, natural norm, from which newer devices are a destructive, worrisome departure. Baron, as his title hints, positions computers as the latest in a long series of tools-for-writing, each of which was met, in its day, with both delight and frustration.
The ways in which computers (re)shape the way we write are numerous, complex, and interrelated. They make plagiarism infinitely easier to commit, but also infinitely easier to detect. They decrease (thanks to automated spelling checkers) the frequency of outright misspellings, but increase (thanks to autocorrect and autosuggest features) the frequency of wrong-word errors. They merge the once-separate processes of writing and typesetting into a single act, which delights some users and appalls others. Baron could easily have spent the last third of the book exploring them, and related issues (like the rise of the first generation in history that routinely communicates through the written word). Unfortunately, rather than maintain his productively narrow focus on how individuals write, Baron expands his examination to consider the venues in which people write, and the reasons why they write there.
The last third of A Better Pencil thus plunges into the depths of MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia, and blogs, and engages a whole new set of issues: online privacy, hate speech, the reliability of crowd-sourced information, and many more. These are important issues, but they’re different issues—where and why people write rather than how they write—than the ones that the first two-thirds of the book provides the historical context for. Baron’s handing of them comes across, as a result, as brief, superficial, and (given that entire books have been written about them) superfluous. His decision to embrace them also makes the book feel conspicuously dated. “How” people write has changed relatively little as computers have morphed into portable, always-connected devices, but “where” and “why” they write have changed enormously. Engaging with the “where” and “why” questions pins A Better Pencil to a specific moment in time—one where smart phones were still new, and MySpace was still relevant—in a way that sticking to “how” questions never would have.
The first half of the book is an argument that the technology with which we write has always affected the way we write. Baron makes the point by considering first the pencil (and, more briefly, the pen), then the typewriter, next the dedicated word processor, and finally the word-processing program. It’s a deceptively simple argument, but a crucially important one. As technologies—the machines becoming familiar, and the use of them routine—we collectively forget that they are technologies that were, once, as revolutionary and disruptive as networked computers are today. We assume that the use of them represents some kind of eternal, natural norm, from which newer devices are a destructive, worrisome departure. Baron, as his title hints, positions computers as the latest in a long series of tools-for-writing, each of which was met, in its day, with both delight and frustration.
The ways in which computers (re)shape the way we write are numerous, complex, and interrelated. They make plagiarism infinitely easier to commit, but also infinitely easier to detect. They decrease (thanks to automated spelling checkers) the frequency of outright misspellings, but increase (thanks to autocorrect and autosuggest features) the frequency of wrong-word errors. They merge the once-separate processes of writing and typesetting into a single act, which delights some users and appalls others. Baron could easily have spent the last third of the book exploring them, and related issues (like the rise of the first generation in history that routinely communicates through the written word). Unfortunately, rather than maintain his productively narrow focus on how individuals write, Baron expands his examination to consider the venues in which people write, and the reasons why they write there.
The last third of A Better Pencil thus plunges into the depths of MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia, and blogs, and engages a whole new set of issues: online privacy, hate speech, the reliability of crowd-sourced information, and many more. These are important issues, but they’re different issues—where and why people write rather than how they write—than the ones that the first two-thirds of the book provides the historical context for. Baron’s handing of them comes across, as a result, as brief, superficial, and (given that entire books have been written about them) superfluous. His decision to embrace them also makes the book feel conspicuously dated. “How” people write has changed relatively little as computers have morphed into portable, always-connected devices, but “where” and “why” they write have changed enormously. Engaging with the “where” and “why” questions pins A Better Pencil to a specific moment in time—one where smart phones were still new, and MySpace was still relevant—in a way that sticking to “how” questions never would have.
did-not-finish
August 13, 2021I read parts of this for my Master’s class, Teaching English with Technology. However, I never finished it, nor did I really read enough of it to make a judgement about it. This review is simply for my own records.
It was useful but not something I’d probably ever go back to unless it came up specifically.
It was useful but not something I’d probably ever go back to unless it came up specifically.
April 3, 2010
A Better Pencil Readers, Writers, and The Digital Revolution by Dennis Baron
Dennis Baron is a professor of linguistics at the University of Illinois. He is writing about how technology expands and creates new varieties of communications. He includes his own experiences with early computers, Wordstar, and word processors. He is writing about the history of technology from the point of a social scientist.
He starts with what it means to transition from an oral culture to one where everything is written down. I liked Plato's idea that writing everything down limits memory. Written records started as a means to record business transactions.
In succession we learn about the development of writing tools and methods; pencils, clay tablets, handwriting, typewriters, early wordprocessors and computers, and the modern digital revolution are covered. In each section there are interesting anecdotes. Henry David Thoreau designed lead pencils. Pencils are still the most used writing implement.
There is a theme that each successive generation of communication technology expands the variety and amount of communication that occurs between people. It does not necessarily improve the quality of communication or education. More people are reading and writing, not necessarily writing better things. Another analogy is the move from the letter to the telegraph to the telephone. There is more communication with more people. Is it better?
If we think of the Google Books Project for example, the objective is to make all the books in a number of universities and libraries available to the public. Because the book is in the library it must have some value and be scanned into a database. Initially the goal is to push all the information into one place. The attempt to organize and clean the data was not the first priority. The idea is that it is a good thing to have everything available. There are benefits and drawbacks to this approach.
Dennis Baron includes arguments for and against the advancement of writing technology. He argues that digital technology is another step in a continuous line of progress from the pencil to the typewriter to the computer. Is it good that everyone can now be an author? Are face pages like myspace and facebook safe places for people to communicate? Is Wikipedia a reliable source of information? We get a sense that how we choose to use the technology is as important as the technology itself.
A Better Pencil includes many illustrations, black and white photographs, and anecdotes. He quotes many different people including Plato, Sartre, Thoreau, Shakespeare, and many others. There is an extensive index and notes. The book is easy to read, well laid out, and entertaining. If you are interested in the history of the written word, this is well worth reading.
Dennis Baron is a professor of linguistics at the University of Illinois. He is writing about how technology expands and creates new varieties of communications. He includes his own experiences with early computers, Wordstar, and word processors. He is writing about the history of technology from the point of a social scientist.
He starts with what it means to transition from an oral culture to one where everything is written down. I liked Plato's idea that writing everything down limits memory. Written records started as a means to record business transactions.
In succession we learn about the development of writing tools and methods; pencils, clay tablets, handwriting, typewriters, early wordprocessors and computers, and the modern digital revolution are covered. In each section there are interesting anecdotes. Henry David Thoreau designed lead pencils. Pencils are still the most used writing implement.
There is a theme that each successive generation of communication technology expands the variety and amount of communication that occurs between people. It does not necessarily improve the quality of communication or education. More people are reading and writing, not necessarily writing better things. Another analogy is the move from the letter to the telegraph to the telephone. There is more communication with more people. Is it better?
If we think of the Google Books Project for example, the objective is to make all the books in a number of universities and libraries available to the public. Because the book is in the library it must have some value and be scanned into a database. Initially the goal is to push all the information into one place. The attempt to organize and clean the data was not the first priority. The idea is that it is a good thing to have everything available. There are benefits and drawbacks to this approach.
Dennis Baron includes arguments for and against the advancement of writing technology. He argues that digital technology is another step in a continuous line of progress from the pencil to the typewriter to the computer. Is it good that everyone can now be an author? Are face pages like myspace and facebook safe places for people to communicate? Is Wikipedia a reliable source of information? We get a sense that how we choose to use the technology is as important as the technology itself.
A Better Pencil includes many illustrations, black and white photographs, and anecdotes. He quotes many different people including Plato, Sartre, Thoreau, Shakespeare, and many others. There is an extensive index and notes. The book is easy to read, well laid out, and entertaining. If you are interested in the history of the written word, this is well worth reading.
January 28, 2011
(From Near Earth Object)
Apart from some interesting bits about the challenges presented by, and the romanticism associated with, various writing tools and implements, Dennis Baron’s A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution is a very repetitive book with little to say. Essentially, Baron gives laborious, truly unnecessary explanations of some of the most common and basic writing means — from pencils and typewriters to Facebook and IMs — fit only for those to whom these technologies are totally alien (so perhaps it will be of use to folks 500 years from now).
On the positive side, there’s a point made by Baron that, while not needing a book’s length to make, is important and worth remembering: Every new means of setting words down has elicited both exciting expansion of the ability to write and publish, as well anxiety over the alleged dire consequences for our culture. And every time, we seem to agree that the advance was worth the ensuing mess and uncertainty. But it’s fun to note that yes, even the pencil, seemed a bridge too far for some folks, and we can keep that in mind when we wonder at the wisdom of Tumblr and Twitter.
Baron also uses the book as a clumsy sledgehammer to attack those he sees as Luddites and tech skeptics. I’m sympathetic to Baron’s position, certainly, but it’s not enough to save the book. Interestingly, Baron may be one among a very rare species: the pro-technology curmudgeon.
Skip this one, at least for the next 500 years.
Apart from some interesting bits about the challenges presented by, and the romanticism associated with, various writing tools and implements, Dennis Baron’s A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution is a very repetitive book with little to say. Essentially, Baron gives laborious, truly unnecessary explanations of some of the most common and basic writing means — from pencils and typewriters to Facebook and IMs — fit only for those to whom these technologies are totally alien (so perhaps it will be of use to folks 500 years from now).
On the positive side, there’s a point made by Baron that, while not needing a book’s length to make, is important and worth remembering: Every new means of setting words down has elicited both exciting expansion of the ability to write and publish, as well anxiety over the alleged dire consequences for our culture. And every time, we seem to agree that the advance was worth the ensuing mess and uncertainty. But it’s fun to note that yes, even the pencil, seemed a bridge too far for some folks, and we can keep that in mind when we wonder at the wisdom of Tumblr and Twitter.
Baron also uses the book as a clumsy sledgehammer to attack those he sees as Luddites and tech skeptics. I’m sympathetic to Baron’s position, certainly, but it’s not enough to save the book. Interestingly, Baron may be one among a very rare species: the pro-technology curmudgeon.
Skip this one, at least for the next 500 years.
June 26, 2014
I cannot say this was a page-turner. Many books were able to leapfrog over it when I would curl up for bedtime reading...why? Baron has chosen a fascinating subject - the transformations wrought by changing writing and reading technologies - but his book suffers from an unusual condition: too much reasonable thinking. When the conclusion of your book includes the sentence, "The effects of the technologies [forcing changes in how we write, read and circulate text] have typically been positive, with some negatives inevitably mixed in - the plusses and minuses owing as much to the vagaries of human nature as to the advantages or disadvantages of the technology itself", you're being a little wishy-washy.
While the book includes flashes of imagination (a good section of Ted Kaczynski as author, an imaginative and inclusive overview of writing technologies form clay tablets to forgotten early word processing programs, a thoughtful meditation on global citizenship in the information age), Baron seems to have written a book that would be better discussed over dinner than actually published. His informal, conversational tone contribute to this impression.
All of this perhaps says more about my expectations than about Baron's book - an effort to consider the ways we are being manipulated by our own communication is a valuable opportunity for reflection. I wish I'd gotten a little more to reflect on here.
While the book includes flashes of imagination (a good section of Ted Kaczynski as author, an imaginative and inclusive overview of writing technologies form clay tablets to forgotten early word processing programs, a thoughtful meditation on global citizenship in the information age), Baron seems to have written a book that would be better discussed over dinner than actually published. His informal, conversational tone contribute to this impression.
All of this perhaps says more about my expectations than about Baron's book - an effort to consider the ways we are being manipulated by our own communication is a valuable opportunity for reflection. I wish I'd gotten a little more to reflect on here.
June 26, 2012
Though Baron hints at his ideology in the many iterations of "writing has always been a technology" formulations he gives, he stops short of ever really coming down on one side or another in terms of the contemporary debate regarding the effect of digital technology on writing, specifically, or literacy, more broadly. Thus, this book was more informative than argumentative, which obviously meant that you had to have an inherent interest in the subject to enjoy it. That said, I found many of its parts enjoyable and interesting -- particularly his close reflections on the early days of word processing, memories that threaten to be forgotten by the current generation of computer users. Nonetheless, while I appreciated the level of detail Baron provided at such junctures, and imagine that the similar details he provides about more contemporary modes of expression from facebook pages to blogs will be of service to future readers, much of this seemed so obvious to me that it wasn't enjoyable to read. All of this, however, makes me wonder whether we might all be better served by writing the history of contemporary technologies during their present. Is this the best way to insure that such histories are written at all? Would some of these phenomena be better off forgotten?
November 22, 2013
Because this book was assigned for class, I figured it would be dry and purely concerned with being informational. I was thrilled to discover that Baron's voice comes through strongly throughout the work and lends a conversational tone to a book that could easily become either dry or preachy.
I'm not sure I would just pick it up to read for fun, but if you're interested in digital technologies and their evolution and/or (slightly dated) usage, you will probably find this an enjoyable and informative read.
I'm not sure I would just pick it up to read for fun, but if you're interested in digital technologies and their evolution and/or (slightly dated) usage, you will probably find this an enjoyable and informative read.
March 26, 2011
Baron is a linguist and gives a good overview of the history of communication. I began reading this because I teach writing but I ended up really liking it for many reasons. It does inform my teaching, and it is also generally informative. I'll probably use some excerpts from it in a hybrid composition course I teach.
July 5, 2010
Not dreadfully dry, but the approach taken regarding internet technology makes one wonder if the author is technologically-challenged, or if he is excessively dumbing it down for a mistargeted audience.
March 4, 2014
A witty overview of the history of writing technologies--from tablets to payprus to pencils, print, and the digital revolution. Demystifes a nostalgia for old forms of writing; assuages fears about new ones. A useful, synthetic text.
February 25, 2016
Review soon.
July 21, 2016
Quite an interesting read of the history of writing and be therefor reading also. Not necessarily memorable but interesting.
January 24, 2010
Excellent story of the evolution of writing. For the whole review, click
here.
here.
July 15, 2013
wDeRteAW
May 14, 2016
Rather long, boring, dull, tedious, and I can think of a few more words. What has the pencil to do with this?
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews