Review on "A better Pencil" (Chapter 7-12)

A great read. Barron finished the book well. There were a few things that I found throughout the text that left me asking myself some questions.

First, he notes on pg. 133 that there were an "estimated twenty-four thousand variations in so standard a text as the King James Bible-also called the "Authorized Version", a name which itself all but guarantees some uniformity-between its initial publication in 1611 and 1830 (Johns 1998, 91)."

The interesting thing here is that he doesn't specify what those variations are. Are they variations in translation? Are they variations in spelling? Are they variations in dialect? Barron leaves us grasping a bit here. Without being somewhat specific about the variations, he leaves the sentence open as a possible undertoned statement.

I found his statement on pg. 134, "So prevalent is online shopping, trading, banking, and bill paying today that the signature, the long-trusted validator of documents ranging in import from declarations of independence to greeting cards and personal checks, and the one last survivor of the decline in handwriting, may soon go the way of the clay tablets and quill pens." to be very profound.

It's amazing to think that in many way Barron may be right. I think about how often I electronically sign something. I'm constantly doing this and so are millions of others throughout the world.

Barron says, "The impending death of the signature is just one of the new wrinkles that the computer has brought to the process of creating and evaluating the written word..."

The signature however, is something that I believe will never go away entirely. It is something that is too personal and has too much significance within our culture. That's why we have hand writing experts....We can't put them out of a job. :-)

Barron's section regarding blogs and their consequences was fascinating. It not only entertained but informed me tremendously. I was unaware of the "Supreme Court's ruling which states that students may lose their First Amendment rights if their speech is potentially disruptive" within the discourse of their blogs. I had always thought of the First Amendment as solid and unbreakable, not something that was malleable and changeable. To learn that their were consequences due to free speech seemed socialistic and communistic, rather than democratic.

The reading also tied in with my DTC 475 class when it talked about the way of language and its destination in technology, past, present, and future. Barron succinctly embodies his book when he talks candidly about how our languages and interactions are directly affected by our technologies and ephemeral social landscapes. His fluid style takes us through these ephemeral social spaces and lets us see first hand how they have a direct impact in our own lives and on the lives of others.

His closing words in the book definately resonated with me. The classes that I'm in now, currently talk about things of the past and possible things of the future, but who really knows what we'll be talking about tomorrow. Who knows how we'll be communicating with one another in a few more years. Who will we be communicating with? Will our interactions with others be different or will they be the same? Will we live in a virtual environment? Will we have a communication breakdown? Will things just fall apart?