Literacy in writing or printing?

One of the reading for this week by Bolter, talks about the difference in writing by hand and writing by machine/printing. He mention that we lose a part of our identity when we type rather than when we write, here he discussed how some of our personal nature is somewhat lost in the ever growing typography field. While when we hand-written something those are like our signature, we leave our marks and signs where we wrote. One of the quote I like is by the old roman rhetorician who said that when we wrote, we can’t keep up with our thoughts so we have the time with our words. I find this fascinating and somewhat true since when I want to write what other people say, I sort of struggle. However Bolter mention how we are losing our ‘marks’ in paper with the development of quicker typing.

Mia mention how the idea of Japanese and Chinese writing intrigue her where children/people who learn those language will work really hard in learning how to write certain symbol and characters and alphabets. I myself is born with that background so I never really thought about this. When I was little at school we will have this special book to practice and learn our calligraphy for alphabets as to have a good legibility and neat writing, as well with Chinese lessons I remember having so many practice book as the way to write Chinese character is complex like you have to start with certain lines first or the dots or certain angle to draw the line. But again, I never really thought about it so when other people pointed out that they don’t really learn that, I find it quite surprising.