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 “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
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With this in mind I pruned a few straight branches off a wild grape vine near my apartment. As mainly a computer based writer, I was thinking in terms of font – all the letters of the alphabet could be crudely formed with straight lines. I pictured the blocky green on black letters of the first computers I had learned to type on. To this end I broke the grape branches into relatively even sections and arranged them on the kitchen table. A flat surface and these broken twigs were my basic writing technology. Obviously I would be limited by the amount of sticks I carried with me, and there would be little value in terms of permanence, but I could shape my thoughts!
The act of actually writing something with my technology was extremely slow, and I came to the conclusion that a strong gust if wind would probably blow all my work away. There was a definite sense of physical work involved with this method of writing. Unlike using a computer or pen and paper, I was constantly aware of the act of writing with my sticks. More modern forms of writing were so easy and fluid that once you began you could focus completely on your thoughts. Working with the twigs, I had to pay constant attention to craft legible letters and keep words somewhat straight. There was no easy melding of the mental and physical worlds here.
The physical labor of my stick script was perhaps closest to the act of typing. My first days on a computer were
staring at a plain sheet of paper, as if by staring at it, words would magically appear. When time
Trubek wishes to provide her audience with a convincing argument that shows how handwriting in this time is inferior to typing on computers. In other words, her primary purpose is to illustrate the idea of focusing on typing automaticity (the ability to type without looking at keys) in schools over handwriting automaticity (the ability to write without conscious effort). This is seen when Trubek explains how if “…the goal of public education is to prepare students to become successful, employable adults, typing is inarguably more useful than handwriting.” (Trubek, 2016, para. 4) Trubek argues that if public schools are working
For many students in America, cursive writing is as foreign as the hieroglyphics of the ancient Egypt. In most colleges and universities, more students are increasingly using tablet computers
First of all, the article states that " Even when studens in the experiment were given a week to study thier notes, thoes who took notes on a laptop preformed worse on a test than students who wrote thier notes by hand." That right there shows that writing is important and will be benifical to the brains learning process. This article also states that, "Typing and printing by hand require individual rather than connected movements like cursive requires. Neither typing nor printing involve communication better both sides of the brain." What I gather from this quote is that it pushes the brain to become strong in thinking by using
Imagine a world where the craft of writing did not exist, where each text had no white space, no syntax or meaning, no emotional connection to the reader--just random words. This project will put forth every effort to show the value of making tangible text from the conversion of imaginative concepts onto paper by the craft of a writer to make use of the written word.
“While some argue, cursive writing belongs in the archives and common core ushers it out of schools, the evidence shows we need it as much as ever.” says Jennifer Doverspike. Some people may question why it is still necessary for cursive to be taught in our schools. Especially when we are no longer in the 21st century. Where we have now entered the new age where technology is constantly on the rise, and tablets and iPhones have taken over. This drastic change has allowed our children and adults to take the easier route. Although the electronic world has taken over and has added new elements to the writing world. Researchers have found a strong connection between writing by hand, the mind, language skills, memory and artificial thinking.
For this reason, I chose to look at my writing through the lens of text. Specifically, I will note what text-space, sometimes referred to simply as space, the writing was completed on or in. Text-space is used in this paper to refer to where the writing was done, whether it be an email program, a forum application, or on a piece of paper. Also I will be looking at the writing as text. In this paper the term refers to the writing as an object, the physical appearance. If the writing is typed, the text will appear considerably different if
Writing has been in the human civilization for thousands of years ago and it has been a way to convey messages and laws. It has evolved as time passes by. Now, writing is used for everyday activities. Some people really are passionate in writing. However, some people do not feel the same. They tend to be stressed when they write because they do not know what to write, and I am one of them.
Mankind has come a long way, from reading the traces left by animals in the soil to reading the scratches and scrawls across a white surface, (or the printed letters on a page). However, printed records are hardly ever hand-written anymore since the impact of electronic (and digital) environments are so prevalent in our lives. With the exception of those who still write out their notes for school or send heartfelt cards during the holidays, most people don 't hand-write anything anymore. The “technology” of the alphabet has been used to create printed records, which has proceeded to produce electronic records.
Having to put pen to paper encourages the brain like nothing else, even in this age of e-mails, texts, and tweets. In fact, wisdom to compose in cursive is shown to advance brain development in the range of thinking, language and working memory. Cursive script triggers brain synapses and synchronicity among the left and right hemispheres, something vanished from printing and typing. The College Board found that students who compose in cursive for the manuscript portion of the SAT scored slightly higher than those who engraved.
I had only used a typewriter once before. It was years ago, long before I had gotten to the point in the school assembly line where having a laptop was required. We were on ‘holidays’. Or rather the mandatory time allocated every few years to visit interstate relatives. It was electric and looked more like a clunky printer with a keyboard fused to the front then any typewriter you’d envision Hemingway owning. Much to the disappointment of my romantic imagination. Still, experimenting with it was an improvement from venturing out into Pop’s vegetable patch where the cane toads baked their ghoulish skin in the sun.
emails and texting. Facts about cursive is that if you write in cursive it improves the brain like
This served as a great coping method for some as they got to express themselves on paper and even just let out their frustrations of the day. I really think I like typing without looking at a screen because it relieves stress, I think if I saw all the red lines from errors, I would freak out but not seeing errors and just writing away feels pretty nice. I also like the typing noise as I write away, it makes the people around me look my direction as I’m typing away like a mad woman, and some asked if I was Bullshitting a last minute assignment I forgot. I sort of wish I was using a type writer, I wonder if this is what it feels like to be a writer, when they are writing a novel, it’s sort of pretty cool sitting here just writing down my thoughts and
Misconceptions What is the first thing you think of when you think ‘writer’? Do you think piles of notebooks? Pens and pencils?
Portability was described as the extent to which the text could be moved or carried. Nature referred to the extent to which the materials used in creating the text and/or writing surface were found in nature and not manufactured or highly processed. During this experiment, I tried to consider what completely natural materials I could find. I resorted to using materials found in my backyard including rocks, dirt, sand, sticks, grass, and leaves. The permanence criterion of the assignment narrowed my choices by eliminating writing in the dirt, sand, or mud or with grass or leaves. Wind or rain would erase any writing created using these materials. The issue of portability further narrowed my decision to use a small, hand-held, sharp rock to scrape or chisel words into a larger stone which was able to be carried. The stone needed to have a writing surface large enough to chisel words but not so large that it could not be easily transported. All in all, inventing a technology which was creative was somewhat of a problem when considering permanence and portability and was overlooked as a criterion.