Pre-Digital Writing

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).  This "simple" writing instrument is so complex that even an economic superpower like China struggles to manufacture them at scale.

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."  But 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 — as a writing instructor in 2025, I regularly see posts on Facebook from English teachers who are giving up on typed research papers and returning to this system of handwritten, in-class essays.

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— a place where we must ensure that students are able to think for themselves — many teachers are forced to rely on outdated writing technologies in order to prevent cheating.