Baron:

Before you Read: The main technology I use for writing is my computer. If im doing a research paper I would use the internet, online books or documents. I would also type my paper on the computer. I would consider a printer technology because it takes my word document and puts it on the paper.  My Grandma remembers using a type writer at her house, it types and prints at the same time, but it doesn't operate on its own and it doesn't help with the research.

Summary: Baron talks about technology, He talks a lot about the pencil being a form of earliest technology.  He moves from the pencil to telegraph, telephone to type writer, and the computer.  In all forms of technology he discusses the criticisms these technologes were faced with.

Synthesis:From Pencils to Pixels, could be synthesized with Brandt sponsorship article. Brandt talks about sponsor ship for literacy. and in Baron's article you can connect the people that invents the pencil in their family factory as a literacy sponsorship. As well as the advancing technologies.  I think this article could also connect to McCloud, because when we watched the video in class he showed the interactive comic where you decided what the stories looked like. This is due to the advancement of the computer and is improving the development of literacy.

QD: the Unabomber was someone afraid of using writings new technologies. He thought that computers were going to hurt human connections with one another. He opposes those you push new technology.

Thoughts: I thought this article was a lot about reality, and how technologies are always being re-developed. I also thought it was interesting because I had never thought of writing as a technology, or a pencil as a technology, I had always just thought of phones and computers but that is closely related to the time we live in.

This is already true, more and more today we see our text books becoming available online, and with technologies such as kindles and Ipad books can be downloaded digitally for any purpose.	"Futurologist write books predicting that computers will replace books"
Again we have already seen the technology of the computer take off in means of communication. Not only can you use word processing software. There are the social networking sites we all use, email, Blogging, etc .	"I will be the first to praise computers,to acknowledge the importance of the computer in the last fifteen years of my own career as a writer, and to predict that in the future the computer will be put to communication uses we cannot now even begin to imagine, something quite beyond the word processing."
I thought this was interesting because we think of writing as the most natural way of communicating ideas or ways of passing down stories through generations or a way to remember your grocery shopping list for the up coming weekend.  Writing is something we take for granted and it is hard to believe that people actually opposed the idea of writing.	"Just like the telegraph and the computer, writing itself was once an innovation strongly resisted by traditionalists because it was unnatural and untrustworthy."
This quote I thought was funny. I thought it was funny because people thought the telephone could replace these things.  The telephone did however replace the need to be face to face with a person you want to communicate with all the time and a quicker way to communicate than letters. Can you imagine having school lecture over the telephone.	"Futurologist predicted that the telephone would replace the school or library as a transmitter of knowledge and information, that medical therapy(including hypnosis ) could be delivered and criminals punished over the phone through the use of electrical impulses."
Today we take advantage of the fact we can write with a nice wooden pencil or even a mechanical one, that we can communicate via letters and phone conversations and even email is become more out dated because texting, social networking is newer and more "fun"	"As the old technologies become automatic and invisible, we find ourselves more concerned with fighting or embracing what's new."