A Better Pencil

A Better Pencil examines the digital revolution in light of the history of writing technology. Baron looks at how we love, fear, actually use our writing machines-not just computers but typewriters, pencils, and clay tablets-how we deploy them to replicate the old ways of doing things while actively generating new modes of mass expression; how we learn to trust new technology and the new and strange sorts of texts that it produces; hwo we expand the notion of who can write and who can't; and how we free our readers and writers while at the same time trying to regulate their activities.

Dennis Baron is Professor of English and Linguistics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

- Preface: Technologies of the Word
- Introduction
- 1.: TeknoFear
- 2.: Thoreau's Pencil
- 3.: National Handwriting Day
- 4.: Writing on Clay
- 5.: When WordStar Was King
- 6.: Trusting the Text
- 7.: Writing on Screen
- 8.: Everyone's an Author
- 9.: A Space of One's Own
- 10.: The Dark Side of the Web
- 11.: From Pixels to Pencils
- Works Cited