Once upon a time in a faraway land known as the Beginning, there lived a small civilization of human beings. Before the foundation of industry, these people lived in small clusters near coves and caverns. These early people, or cavemen, relied on the elements of nature to get by. Instead of electricity they had lightning and fire. Instead of indoor plumbing, they had forest trees and leaves. Before they had up to date means of communication, they had fingers, voices, and sticks. There wasn’t a telegram that could be sent across the country. There wasn’t a letter that could be sent through mail. All that was available were chalk or dirt drawings and their own voices. Writing had to start from somewhere. Society is not where it is today because of an automatic presence of digital and printed texts. Writing has developed to more advanced forms through the ages. Why is this? What has caused this? What is happening to writing as it stands today?
Writing started off as a standardized method of conveying ideas or cultural conventions. It started as a place to record stories or songs that represented important historical events or characters. But over the years as our culture began to advance, so did the writing. Writing has changed from a simple technique to a more stylized and utilized component to society. At first, methods of writing expanded slowly. There was the telegram and the letter, which could take days to deliver. Now there exists instant email and text messaging to receive messages quicker. Writing has transformed from a traditional, aesthetic form to a pure technological one. As cultures begin to speed up their lives the need for word processors and digital print intensifies in order to match the daily life. Gone are the days of beautiful chalk writings, ink written love letters, or hieroglyphics to tell fantastical stories. Or record historical and personal reports. Now there is a vast variety to convey these topics as well as convey annual reports, research, and magazine articles via the Internet and word processing.
These expansions confide to the new established needs of the public. The creation of hypertext, according to J. David Bolter, has helped expand the previous limits to accessibility. Hypertext links an individual to several different sources with the simple click of a button. Instead of spending tedious amounts of time searching the books in the library, as grandparents once had to in those college days, now information can be gathered in a simple search. Hypertext also provides a means of gathering more information. Books are limited in that there is so much information out there to gather that it is extremely improbable to obtain it all through time- consuming searches from book to book. Being able to obtain more information through data streams has given more knowledge to how an individual writes. Writing probably was not as structured in the early beginnings, for there was not much to go on. It started as a mainstream way of passing information and now it is growing into more versatile uses such as speeches, newspaper articles, and protests.
But writing is also growing towards a more digital era. How many articles are being printed via computed instead of being printed manually and physically? The number is draining as people are now using such instruments such as nooks and kindles. The newspaper is not as thick anymore. Even writers publish their books by digital means. No one actually writes much by hand these days except to write checks, sign their name, grade papers, and other trivial chores.
These days there had also been an addition of visual aid to writing. It is more common to paint a picture with words and paint words with a picture than to have words without the image or image without the words. Hieroglyphics was a language used among the people that have taken archeologists years to decipher. Is there a way where images can coincide with words that everyone understands? Traditionally, writing was not so widespread; making the variety that writing possesses limited to each community. How would the English know about the stories of Huckleberry Finn. Or how would the Chinese understand the take to The Scarlett Letter. Each culture has something considered to be separate from other cultures, yet there are universal images and words that apply to general standards. Fear, sadness, and happiness are recognized worldwide, so it can be possible to form those words into a plausible image. Writing has become more artistic over the ages. It has strayed away from the arduous task of meticulous handwriting, which generally applied to recording history or epic sonnets. Now there are new forms in the style of newspapers, magazines, printed text, and digital billboards.
According to Bolter, “ Words should be seen, not just read.” There should be depth in the words written, which he implies is an unusual custom to do. Writing has expanded to the point where there can be a lot of depth in what an individual reads. When writing about a boy who has fallen down a well, one should be able to visualize the scene with the painted words. One should be able to smell the cookies made by grandma or taste the droplets of rain falling on their lips. So much can be gathered behind the meaning of words that another world can be created out of it.
But now it is time to wonder if too much can be gained from the evolution of writing. In the past, there wasn’t too much accessibility to absorb everything in. People were less educated then than they are today. Nowadays a simple link will take a person to any information in the world instead of being confined locally. But is there a limit to the growth of writing. At one point, how does one know that the information they are searching for is correct? There is so much to sift through, that it can become overwhelming to find what one is looking for. Plus, these days anyone could write about anything, such as the mating habits of unicorns, and call themselves an expert. There is a good chance tat they reader will believe them, if there are enough articles to support it. Writing has traveled through time opening new gateways to social interaction.
Now lets go back to the fourteenth century and look at writing in the form of a manuscript. There was yet to be the invention of the printed press but there was access to parchment and ink. It is curious to wonder how people during that time would react to such drastic changes in writing that society has today. They probably didn’t think about the remediation of print and how it could extend to serve more purposes. In those times, a person was considered extremely important if they knew how to write. Today, it is a requirement to know how to write. With writing comes all sorts of creative possibilities that expand upon what was previously done. Technology gives special effects behind the pictures that coincide with words. Instead of a two dimensional drawing that depicts a fire eating away at a village, technology adds mobility and three dimension to draw more power behind a written description of a village. There is so much writing can do these days that it couldn’t do before. The problem is, will the expansion ever stop.
As long as technology keeps advancing, so will writing techniques. It is now necessary to have a class that teaches one to type quickly on a keyboard. But is there a limit to writing? How far can we go with writing? If the advancements stop, will society revert to old ways after being out of practice? Writing has become an essential tool in communicating across the globe and channeling individual expressions or ideas. Where would society be without writing? So many questions about this can be refuted in so many different ways. For instance, Will has argued that pictures are not necessary companions to words. But others’ such as Bolter and Virginia, regard pictures as another gateway that tags along with words. Writing comes in many different shapes and forms, and as Virginia puts it “visuals are an important part of metaphors, which are incredibly successful at conveying feelings” as well as adding to the significance of words. Writing can be descriptive, analytical, dialectical, or expressional. There is no right way to writing, unless one gets into technical grammar and spelling, but people should be able to write freely or structured. It is more than an educational habit. Writing has evolved to many stages so a person isn’t stuck in the past copying Latin or writing a diary. Writing is a part of society that has changed for the better.
Once upon a time there was a place called Haven where people got along well enough. They were satisfied with business, content with technology, and indulged in writing. Though writing can be slipping away, people are generally pleased by the fact that whatever they publish can be viewed from across the world. The best part is they can write about anything: sports, pumpkin pie cancer, and armadillos. Each day they secretly thank their ancestors for bestowing this gift upon them. Without this ability to write, who knows where society would be now. The change from scriptures to digital has not delayed society; they run at a quicker pace now so they need quicker technology. It’s too tiresome to write by hand now. Although that may die out, writing itself in every form, whether its chalk, pencil, ink, or computer, will remain intact. It doesn’t matter what tool a person uses to write- it’s the quality that comes from it. Writing means nothing if there isn’t a type of quality that doesn’t confuse the reader. But as long as a person needs eyes to read, there will always be someone to write, no matter how evolved it has become.
