Creating a Writing Technolgy :: Invention Inventing Writing Essays

Creating a Writing Technolgy This paper is an analysis of the assignment given to "create" a writing technology. The attempt must be made to write a twenty (or fewer) word text using natural materials only, that is, materials that have not been processed, produced, or man-made. The goal is to create a writing technology that uses natural materials, that has permanence, that is legible, and finally, that is creative. I stumbled onto my "paper" when I found large pieces of bark that had fallen off tall trees on campus. The piece I collected was approximately three feet long by one foot wide. The condition of my "paper" was rather poor. The exterior surface was rough and gnarled - impossible to write on - and the interior surface, though while overall it was smooth, was rusty brown with various discolorations and had slight raises and bumps in its surface. The bark was cracked along the length of it in many places and ready to break apart if it were to be dropped. With such a unique surface, I found it interesting that I had taken the quality of good paper for granted. Mark Twain describes his experience of buying a new writing device - a typewriter. Yet he makes no comment on the paper he used (500-3). No doubt the paper he used was of much poorer quality than the paper found today, yet Mark Twain makes no mention of how the typewriter worked on the paper of his day. Perhaps it was a nonissue, that in the same way that I take for granted the good quality of paper today, Mark Twain also took for granted the paper he had available. This experience is consistent with Dennis Baron's view that "we have a way of getting so used to writing technologies that we come to think of them as natural rather than technological" (51). Whether it was paper produced today or in the day of Mark Twain, respectively we were so familiar with the quality of the existing writing mediums that little consideration is given to the materials themselves - as long as they work. Now faced with a project of writing on a piece of bark, my assumptions were suddenly removed and I was able to examine writing as a truly laborious process. In choosing my "ink", I desired a fruit or vegetable that would be easily obtainable, and that would permanently stain the bark.