A better pencil addresses the impact of digital technologies on reading and writing practices by contextualizing these developments within the communication technologies that have preceded them. Though computers are often blamed for a perceived deterioration of culture and language, Baron notes that scorn and mistrust of communication technologies is not a new phenomenon; in fact, writing, the printing press, and the telegraph were all greeted at first with skepticism. And despite the pervasive anxiety that “internet speech” is resulting in the destruction of grammar and spelling, Baron observes that online communities enforce their own linguistic norms. Rather than a linguistic free-for-all, Baron argues, “spelling counts” in virtual spaces just as it does offline.
The first chapter addresses the historical trajectory of philosophies of writing, from Socrates' conception of writing as untrustworthy to the contemporary tendency to associate written documents with authority, as exemplified by the importance placed on written laws, signatures, and “hard copies” of documents. Ch. 2 explores social anxieties that often meet new communication technologies, using the example of Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) to illustrate the violent consequences of an extreme antitechnology stance. Baron draws attention to the tendency of new technologies to exacerbate social inequalities, since new opportunities engendered by these technologies are limited to the people who can afford access to them.
Ch. 3 discusses the development of pencil technology and how the pencil achieved popularity as a writing instrument. Ch. 4 deals with the decline of handwriting and the romanticism and nostalgia that often surround it. Ch. 5 describes a workshop experiment conducted by the author in which he instructs students to write in modeling clay; he suggests that using an unfamiliar medium can help us consider the effects of writing with various technologies.
Chs. 6 and 7 trace the development of the computer from an unwieldy and user-unfriendly machine to today's omnipresent personal computer, and examines how users trust and test the machine's authority. Chs. 8, 9, and 10 explore genres that have been enabled by computer technology, such as blogs and social networking sites, and Ch.11 looks specifically at the “dark side” of the internet, such as hate groups. This chapter also investigates the complex negotiations of privacy, convenience, and data mining that accompany engagement with social media.
Ch. 12 analogizes computers to typewriters, which in their day were hailed as the transformative solution for education; Baron asks whether computers will have the impact on education practices that people claim or whether such claims are overstated.
Baron takes a reasonable middle ground, refraining from either hailing digital technologies as entirely revolutionary and liberating, or demonizing them as emblematic of cultural deterioration or as mere breeding grounds for hatred. Baron accounts for both the benefits and pitfalls of the digital revolution and analyzes it as merely another set of technological innovations, usefully situating them within a history of writing technologies.
