“Not a Pencil”Every day millions of people around the world use some form of writing. When they send an email, write a check, or read a billboard, these people are using technology that has been around for centuries. Like the wheel, writing is almost never seen as a technology when compared to HDTVs, cell phones, and the X Box. However, how people write and what they use to write are more complex technologies than they seem. Almost as long as writing has existed, there have been those who have discussed, challenged, and praised this technology, but these types of theories can sometimes be difficult for a literate person to consider. By trying to create a new writing technology, such theories become much easier to understand. As part of an assignment for my writing class, I was asked to invent my own writing technology including something to write with and on. For my writing technology, I formed words with the juices of the leaves and wrote on a piece of bark. To do this, I first had to find a piece of bark that was large enough to write on and light enough to show the writing. After taking a few pieces of bark from the trees near my house, I began experimenting with stamping them with houseplant leaves. I did this by twisting one end of the leaf and smearing it on the bark. Once I found the cortex that worked best, I wrote the words “Not a pencil.” I wrote it for two reasons. One reason is because he highlighted another writing technology that people rarely consider, the pencil. Secondly, he was referring to Denis Baron's emphasis on the pencil in his article "From pencils to pixels". The "good" result of my writing technology is different... in the middle of the paper... it works the same way. My experience with leaf juice and bark has been a crude type of technology that probably won't extend beyond my one-time use. If someone were to build on that idea, and perhaps create a tool that dispenses leaf juice onto a very smooth, light-colored piece of bark, then the application of this technology could venture into many unknown abilities. Works Cited Tribble, Evelyn B. and Anne Trubek, eds. Writing material: readings from Plato to the digital age. New York: Longman, 2003. Barone, Dennis. "From pencils to pixels." Tribble and Trubek 35-53.Barone, Naomi. “The Art and Science of Handwriting.” Tribble and Trubek 54-61.Ong, Walter. “Writing is a technology that restructures thought.” Tribble and Trubek315-37.Plato. “From Phaedrus.” Tribble and Trubek 360-64.