Pre-Digital Writing

Civilization Is Built on Words

Though you might no think of pens and pencils and chalkboards as "technology," these instruments revolutionized the spread of writing and literacy across the world.  From quills to lead type to cuneiform pressed into clay tablets, human societies have employed writing for thousands of years.

In the age of computers, you might wonder why these examples of pre-digital writing still matter.  Well, just look at your humble pencil that you've no doubt used in the past week — as reported in NPR, the "lead" in your pencil has gone through tremdous development (Kellman et al.), from the discovery of graphite in the 1500s to the inclusion of clay and manufacturing of wooden cases.  At each stage, people updated and refined the pencil to gradually improve how well they work for writing and drawing.  Or consider that ballpoint pen for when you need more permanent letters: up until 2017, China was unable to manufacture a ballpoint pen (Atkinson), and as of 2024, China remains heavily reliant on outside imports for ballpoint pens (Hui).  These "simple" writing instruments are so complex that even an economic superpower like China struggles to manufacture them at scale.

Why does that matter?  Because our technological society depends upon the written word.  From social and economic standpoints, development of the modern pen and pencil can reveal a great deal about how our society communicates, exchanges products, and builds this monster we call "modern civilization."  From instruction manuals to academic papers to those status updates your grandparents share on Facebook, we connect across time and space through the written word.  Whether we're talking Phoenician clay tablets or the Romans scribbling in wax, writing has laid the groundwork for many of our social, scientific, and economic relationships.

Why the "Old" Technology Returns

At the level of teaching, it's important to realize that many teachers are going back to these technologies as a way to evade and overcome the educational challenges posed by AI.  When I attended college in the late 1990s/early 2000s, it was common to have final exams with assigned seats and blank blue books filled with lined paper.  For some courses, professors couldn't trust us to do our writing at home out of fear that students would cheat through copying or collaboration.  As technology progressed, it became more and more common to give up on handwritten assignments, especially in English courses.  Even if students could copy off the internet, it was easy enough to track down plagiarism cases — whenever I suspected a student was cheating, I simply copied their sentences into Google to see if their words came from an outside website.  But AI has changed the game.  As a writing instructor today in 2025, I regularly see posts on Facebook from English teachers who are giving up on typed research papers completed at home.  Many are returning to the old system of handwritten, in-class essays.  And that pains me.  I do believe we need to use modern technology — and that includes the keyboard and a screen — but AI has left many with no choice.  College courses don't exist to teach copy-paste — our courses are meant to teach thinking.  And if the technology prevents thinking, then we revert to the old ways.

This, too me, is a symptom of serious problems in modern education.  We live in a digitally connected world — to succeed in the economy of the Information Age and the new AI Era, you must be able to use digital tools for writing and research.  And yet in the classroom — a place where we must ensure that students are able to think for themselves — many teachers are forced to rely on outdated writing technologies just to prevent cheating.  And why?  Because what's the point of college if we can't guarantee you've actually learned to think deeply about complex topics.