Wel Now Essay

Submitted By Lfloate10
Words: 601
Pages: 3

Southern Cross University

School of Arts and Social Sciences

ONLINE ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET

Unit Code: COM10295

Unit Name: Written Communication

Assignment Number: 2

Name: Lucas Floate

Student Number: 22096900

Submission Date: 19/3/2013

STUDENT DECLARATION

I have read and understand the Rules Relating to Awards (Rule 3.18) as contained in the University Handbook. I understand the penalties that apply for plagiarism and agree to be bound by these rules.

Signature: (submitting your assignment online is equivalent to signing this form)

A critical evaluation of Baron’s ‘A better pencil’

The issue raised in ‘a better pencil’ is that because writings capacity to act as a reminder and its ability to queue memory, it has become an overwhelming part of society in everyday life.

Baron claims that if society wants to remember it writes it down, it “wants it in writing”1. Once in writing it is then seen as more trustworthy then one’s actual memory and in terms of law, politics and money the truth is desired, so writing it down became a way to confirm truth. Baron also claims that because we all use writing it is used as a way to track our buying habits, what we read, our general interest’s and then all that information is used in statistics, to then use as information to improve the writing techniques to increase our consumption. He then goes on to claim that because of the development in technology, writing has a wider variety of medium and capacity to be viewed, thus creating a larger and wide spread availability to use it as memory queue as well as better way of storing, displaying and more efficient way of distributing and printing. He claims that because of the ready availability it has become an overwhelming part in society.

The first part of evidence Baron gives is Socrates foreshadowing being used as memory, “writing will only make human memory weaker”2. He then goes on to give examples on how we use writing; in receipts for things we buy, documents and contracts to consolidate business agreements as well as everything we see in the streets; bill boards advertisements on the sides of buses, posters on the walls and shops, street signs in every corner we look to remind us