My Dusty Pens

As I look at the exquisite pens in the oak box on my desk, the pens seem adorned with a sense of the life their masters once gave them. The dust that covers their shiny surfaces hints of their neglect. Meaning can be drawn from the dust on these exquisite pens. It seems that many years after their owners passed, these pens continue to communicate. The pens’ dust acts to signify their unfortunate relegation to neglect in a box and illustrates the great shift from the pen to the computer. To some extent, this shift is obvious; however, its hidden implications may be very damaging.

Pens and computers are different, and, therefore, the cognitive demands for their use are different. The processes of sculpting with clay and sculpting with marble present similar contrasts. With clay, the process of changing or modifying a sculpture is easy: revising a sculpture's form becomes a liberal part of the sculpting process. For example, with clay, sculptors edit and re-edit their work. A sculptor working with clay may add a nose to his sculpture, pull the nose off, make the nose larger (or smaller), or reposition the nose. On the other hand, sculptors working in marble must form their sculptures in their minds, before they begin the process of chiseling: with marble, sculptors have a very difficult time physically re-editing their work. The entire cognitive requirement for each process is very different. Similarly, many people who are conditioned to computer writing environments—like word processors and email software—write sentences, cut words, move sentences, move paragraphs, rearrange sentences, and edit their words in a very nonlinear way. To some extent, the process of writing on a computer resembles sculpting with clay, and writing with a pen resembles sculpting with marble.

The computer has completely changed the writing process. Writing essays with a pen is rewarding if a person has been conditioned to writing essays with pens; however, when many people who are conditioned to writing with computers are handed pens and asked to write essays, they are faced with frustrations that are similar to the frustrations we could expect from a sculptor who is conditioned to working in clay, who would like to rearrange or enlarge a marble sculpture’s attribute: today, many computer users who are asked to use pens (or pencils) for writing essays experience great difficulty when they negotiate with a process that does not permit cutting words, moving sentences, moving paragraphs, rearranging sentences, and editing their words in a modular, nonlinear way. To paraphrase Levy and Randsall, studies by Siegler (1995) and O'Hara (1996) indicate that changes in a task environment can have a significant impact on the costs of both overt and reflective activities and thereby influence the way in which the tasks are carried out (10).

Depending on how writers are conditioned to writing, they acquire appropriate cognitive skills. “The computer, when it is used as a processor […] becomes an extension of our memory in a more organic sense than this is usually taken to mean. [...] That is, the computer feels to us as if it is an auxiliary hemisphere of our own minds” (Bolter 39). To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, we adopt technologies as extensions of our selves, and, as we adopt technologies, we trade, relegate, or replace some of our existing capabilities (7). For example, in oral cultures that exist without any written language or record, many people have the ability to remember and recite incredible volumes of information because their primary form of recorded information (or history) is memory. When oral cultures adopt a written language (as an extension of themselves and their culture), they no longer need to develop skills to remember and recite volumes of information. In this example, oral cultures that adopt the technology of writing (as a form of recordkeeping) exchange or relegate their highly developed memories. In the same way, writers who adopt computers (as extensions) exchange their ability to write essays or long written compositions with pens: the different cognitive demands of the pen as a medium for writing disappear, and new cognitive demands are born.

The computer is changing the way that people use pens. “A new medium is never an addition to an old one, nor does it leave the old one in peace. It never ceases to oppress the older media until it finds new shapes and positions for them” (McLuhan 174). Many computer users relegate the use of pens to short notes, lists, forms, diagrams, and signatures: computer users use pens for writing that does not require iterative editing or formal structural composition (Bolter 40).

When we explore computer use at most universities, we find examples of the universities’ support for initiatives that extend themselves and their students with computer technology. New computer labs, computer workstations, smart classrooms, digital libraries, wireless network antennas, digital projectors, and computer kiosks dot university landscapes. To a very large degree, computers are necessary for true participation in universities. In an attempt to understand the frequency of students’ computer use for writing, I created an online poll1 that asked professors about their policies concerning writing assignments. The results from this poll are revealing: the vast majority of the teachers stated that they require typed writing assignments, and the same professors stated that between 99 and 100% of the writing projects that are produced by students are typed or produced on a computer. Some of the professors’ comments included: “I remember using quills and ink stands in grade school. How the process of thinking was slowed down then because of the medium as compared with what I am using right now.” “I cannot remember the last handwritten paper from a student.” “[…] No one writes with a pen anymore. This question is so 70s.” “I must have done okay in hand-written exams but I doubt if I could now that my process has been changed so dramatically by the word-processor.” Indeed, universities are actively conditioning students to the process of writing on computers. But the university is not the only force that conditions students to writing on computers.

It is not difficult to understand the enormity of this shift when we examine North American computer adoption and usage statistics. According to a report produced by the (US) National Center for Education Statistics, in 2001 more than 90% of high-school-age students used computers, and three-quarters of children use computers by age five (3). A 2003–04 study by the US Census Bureau reveals that 61.8% of US households have computers and over 93% of those households use computers for communication (1). According to Statistics Canada, approximately 96% of urban and rural youth reported using computers in 1999. In 2004, virtually all Canadian elementary and secondary schools had computers, and there was approximately one computer for every five students (1). It is easy to understand how a great (and growing) majority of students who are entering universities have been conditioned to computers as a writing tool.

We live in a world filled with pens and computers. This world is filled with people who enjoy writing with pens and people who enjoy writing with computers. Pens and computers are both useful writing tools, and these two preferences do not always exist in polarity: often, they exist in shades or degrees of preference. In the future, there will always be people who use pens (as today there are people who use quills and inkwells); however, the use of the pen as a writing tool will continue to decrease.

The pressure to use computers in our society can be compared to our pressure to make and use money. Money is a technology. Society rewards people who have (or make) money and imposes pressure and fear of exclusion on individuals who do not have (or lose) money. The amount of money that we have or do not have can determine our degree of enslavement by money. In this example, money, as a technology, has the ability to influence our involvement in its adoption by appealing directly to our instincts for survival (and inclusion). To understand this force more clearly, we can look at other technologies.

Have you ever thought about what life was like before the fax and email? More specifically, what was life like waiting for documents as they traveled through physical postal systems? Today, people are less patient. Expectations have changed: today, many people dread waiting for documents to travel through physical mail systems, because technologies like faxes and email have conditioned everyone to fast document transfers. Today, documents can travel through time; therefore, technology has radically changed the pace of life and our understanding of time. “There is no there, there is only here” (MCI). Today, you are “here” and the only place you can find “there” is in disconnected parts of the world (McLuhan 19). In only the past twenty years—since the launch of the personal computer—computers as writing tools have continued to change the way that we write. Like the fax and email, the computer changes our writing expectations.

Today, computer technologies are required for the great majority of commercial and personal writing because our capitalist economies require the computer’s efficiency: the computer’s text translation capabilities and fast delivery speeds are expected. In the same way that email changed our use of physical postal systems by relegating postal systems to delivery channels for bills, advertisements, personal notes, and physical objects, the computer is relegating our use of the pen to short notes, lists, forms, diagrams, and signatures.

Today, there is no time to spend on processes that require the physical translation of text from one medium to another. As an example, we can explore a simplified illustration of the journalist’s writing and publishing process from thirty years ago: in the past, a writer would write an article on paper (with a pen or a typewriter). This writer would iterate his article on paper (with a pen or typewriter) until it was time to send the article to the editor. When the editor received the article from the writer, she would write comments on the article and pass on the article to the typographer’s office. When the article arrived at the typographer’s office, the typographer physically translated the article from the writer’s paper to a format suitable for printing on a printing press. (For the sake of clarity, I have eliminated several steps from this arduous publishing process.) This process was necessary for each manifestation of the writer’s article: this physical translation process occurred for each publication in which the article appeared. Today, the process has collapsed. The process is condensed into a real-time activity, and documents are quickly translated between Microsoft Word files, email messages, web pages, XML documents, and other text formats and, in many cases, published for the masses with one click of a computer’s button. Text that is produced on a computer can be duplicated infinitely and effortlessly. Many years ago, someone said, “Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.” Today we could say, “Never argue with a person who has an Internet connection.”

Many people argue that pens are obsolete and that all educational writing should be conducted with computers. This argument is problematic because a digital divide exists. By limiting writers to the use of computers, we hurt many people who have not been fortunate enough to have access to technology. We also discriminate against people who are conditioned to pens as their preferred writing environment.

Numerous writing tests exist in our educational systems that do not compensate for the vastly different cognitive processes that are required by students who are conditioned to pens or computers for writing. Many of the newer tests in schools require writing with a computer while many of the older tests in schools require writing with a pen. Pen users and computer users are easily disabled and stifled by tests that require the use of writing tools that do not accommodate the students’ cognitive writing process. Therefore, accurate samples of student’s writing cannot be extracted from students without compensating for their preferred writing processes. Basing accuracy on tests that do not compensate for the writers’ preferences is similar to basing the accuracy of hockey players' hockey skills on a tryout that requires hockey players to play hockey with brooms while they wear sneakers. Obviously, the world of writing has changed over the past twenty years, but the many writing tests are stuck. We must ask, “Are students being evaluated on their ability to use a physical tool or their writing skills?”

Many believe that people should have the ability to use pens and computers for everyday writing. This scenario would be ideal; in fact, many people exhibit this dexterity, but asking people to adopt the pen as a test writing tool, after many years of writing on computers requires a very time-consuming reconditioning—if reconditioning and re-education are even possible. Asking people to adopt the computer as a test-writing tool after many years of writing with pens may require technical training. Again, if we wish to accurately access people’s writing skills, people must have their choice of the pen or the computer.

When students are faced with writing environments that they are not conditioned to, they are stifled, marginalized, and discouraged from the wonderful and crucial art of writing. Many believe that they are defective or disabled. Others believe that they have a learning disability. Indeed, there are thousands of scholarly articles about pedagogy with computers and computer writing environments but few that focus on the vastly different writing requirements of pens and computers.

Many factors hinder accurate student testing. Twenty-year-old (pre-personal-computer) testing processes or insufficient technology capabilities often stifle the accuracy and evolution of testing environments. Investments in testing environments that compensate for student’s needs and training faculty to manage dual pen/computer testing environments can be very costly. Ongoing training for faculty also adds to computer testing overhead. Many years ago, I was a member of the team that created web browser and Internet server technology (at Netscape). At Netscape, we had a program called Adopt a School, and everyone on my team would adopt and wire a school for Internet connectivity. This was the first time that I experienced the bizarre discrepancy between the students and teachers’ computing skills. Indeed, the teachers learned a lot about computing from those students, and I know my teammates and I did. However, my teammates and I had endless calls from those schools asking for tutorials. Technology evolves very quickly; therefore, computer literacy requires constant training.

It is easy to see how the pen and computer condition writers to vastly different writing processes, how the pen and the computer co-exist, how we relegate (and repurpose) older technologies as we adopt new ones, and how some of the pressures from schools, universities, our society, and our capitalist economy can influence (or force) writers to adopt computers as writing tools. If we wish to accurately access students’ writing skills, we must develop testing environments that compensate for the different cognitive processes that are required by writers’ conditioning to different writing tools. Finally, the pens in that box continue to fascinate me, but I could never use them for writing anything more than a short note, a list, or my signature. I am completely unable to generate written compositions with a pen. So if you have problems on tests that require writing with pens or problems on tests that require writing on a computer, take comfort in knowing that you are not defective, impaired, or learning disabled. There are many, many of us out here.

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Works Cited

Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing.
Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1991.

Britton, Bruce K. and Shawn M. Glynn, eds. Computer Writing Environments: Theory,
Research, and Design. Glynn. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1989.

Canadian Culture, Tourism, and the Centre for Education Statistics. “Information and
Communications Technologies in Schools Survey.” 10 June 2004. Statistics
Canada. 22 March 2005
.

Levy, C. Michael and Sarah Ransdell, eds. The Science of Writing: Theories, Methods,
Individual Differences, and Applications. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 1996.

Looker, E. Dianne and Victor Thiessen. “Digital Divide in Schools: Student Access to
and Use of Computers.” 23 June 2003. Statistics Canada. 21 March 2005
.

MCI. Advertisement. CNN. 1994.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding the Media: Extension of Man. Toronto:
McGraw-Hill, 1964.

Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the World. New York:
Methuen, 1982.

Skinner, David. "McLuhan's World-And Ours." Public Interest Wntr 2000: 52.

US Census Bureau. 2003 Internet and Computer Use Data. Day Month Year
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US Department of Commerce. A Nation Online: Entering the Broadband Age. 2004. 20
March 2005
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Posted on May 6, 2005 04:28 PM | TrackBack