Week 6: Essay -- The Increasing Obsoleteness of Pencils

The Increasing Obsoleteness of Pencils

The Pencil Tutorial

Cartoon by Hilary Price

I laughed when I saw this! Having to relate a pencil to a computer in order to explain how it works to a kid seems a bit ridiculous, doesn't it? We still use pencils, even in this technology-flooded day and age. But I thought about for a moment, and I began to wonder: would there be a time like this?

My guess? Probably. I doubt it will be anytime soon, by which I mean in the next fifty to one hundred years. But there's no reason to steadfastly believe that a pencil will still be relevant well into the twenty-second century.

People have increasingly been using technology rather than a simple pen and paper for writing. As laptops have become more widespread, so has the use of the computer in terms of writing. It's extremely common for college students, and even high school students, to use a computer to take notes. And the number of people using this method will not decrease; it will only increase as technology becomes an even more integral part of our lives.

Think about nowadays. I've seen seven year old kids with smartphones in their hands, texting away to their friend. And when I see it, I think that it's way too young to be having a phone, let alone a smart phone. Heck, I didn't get one until I was in eighth grade (though most people my age got a cellphone around sixth grade). But then I think about my parents. I bet they thought the same thing when I got my phone.

And thus it shows that technology is seeping into our lives at such a fast rate that from generation to generation we can't even recognize some of the things that were commonplace. I once asked my eight year old cousin if he knew what a VCR was, and he said he had no idea, shaking his head. It's become so obsolete that someone who's only about ten years younger than me doesn't have the faintest idea of what I'm talking about.

And when technology has completely taken over our lives and writing on paper has become a rarity, we might see a milder version of what happened to the VCR. Sure, people aren't going to forget what a pencil is. They probably would somewhat understand how to use it as well, based on what it looks like (since it is like a tablet's pen, with an eraser). They would, however, rarely if ever use it. Give it time -- the standard graphite pencil will become basically obsolete.