Chapter 1:How is writing technological?

In my introduction I explained that during the first week of composition theory it was hard for me to view writing as a technology. As a person with a passion for writing and reading written work (surprise I'm a writing major) I thought of writing as second nature, something natural. Sure, everyone has to learn how to read and write but once that hurdle is overcome writing becomes something we do to communicate and what is more natural then communicating? Before composition theory I thought of technology as something that required electricity, maybe a few nuts and bolts. My composition theory teacher, Professor Silva, brought in papyrus paper, graphite, some rope and play-dough. Our assignment was to answer a question she had put up on the board, but first we had to make the pencils. After the struggle I endured trying to make the pencil and the difficulty I had writing with it, I realized that the pencil really is a piece of technology. So is the paper we use and the chairs we sit on. After that exercise I was more open to thinking of writing as a technology.  If I had any doubts the readings I mentioned in my introduction made me see realize how major of a technology writing is.

  Pencils to Pixels by Denis Baron describes writing as a technology, the first technology. When writing was first introduced as hard as it is to believe, many people were against it. Plato thought writing would weaken the minds of the people because they no longer had to memorize things, they could simply write it down. In class we discussed how similar arguments are made whenever a new technology is introduced. Teachers worried about calculators preventing students from knowing their math. Walter Ong's "Writing is a Technology that Reconstructs Thought" has some very illuminating quotes. " Our literature word of visually processed sounds has been totally unfamiliar to most human beings, who always belonged, and often still belong to this oral world." After reading this article I thought to myself, if writing is so natural why hasn't every culture developed a writing system?  Ong clearly states how writing is technological with that sentence  Writing is visually processed sounds put on paper with the help of the alphabet.