How I Invented Writing Essay - 1316 Words

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 â€Å"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†¦show more content†¦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 wereShow MoreRelatedBenefits And Benefits Of Writing922 Words   |  4 PagesWriting and its Benefits The first phase in writing; invented spelling, is illustrated by Kelli, a first grader. Young children use invented spelling as a vehicle to express their thoughts. When exposed to various types of print, or writing; cereal boxes, signs, television, billboards, and any books that are read to them, the child will mimic the sounds they hear of the words they wish to write. 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