- “Writing itself is always first and foremost a technology, a way of engineering materials in order to accomplish an end” (16)
- “After [technologies'] invention, their spread depends on accessibility, function, and authentication” (16). “Not only must the new technology be accessible and useful, it must demonstrate its trustworthiness as well. So procedures for authentication and reliability must be developed before the new technology becomes fully accepted” (17)
- “Because of the high cost of the technology and general ignorance about it, practitioners keep it to themselves at first – either on purpose or because nobody else has any use for it – and then, gradually, they begin to mediate the technology for the general public. The technology expands beyond this 'priestly' class when it is adapted to familiar functions often associated with an older, excepted form of communication. As costs decrease and the technology becomes better able to mimic more ordinary or familiar communications, a new literacy spreads across a population. Only then does the technology come into its own, no longer imitating the previous forms given us by the earlier communication technology, but creating new forms and new possibilities for communication. Moreover, in a kind of backward wave, the new technology begins to affect older technologies as well” (16)
- “We have a way of getting so used to writing technologies that we come to think of them as natural rather than technological” (32)
Baron compares computer writing technologies to the technology of the pencil, of the telephone, and of writing itself. He describes how they began, articulates that there were critics of each technology, shows that they were adapted to and in opposition to older technologies, and states that they were both eventually accepted (once they met the requirements of “accessibility, function, and authentication” (16)). He also illustrates that the pencil is actually a fairly complicated technology: “Pencil technologies involve advanced design techniques, the preparation and purification of graphite, the mixing of graphite with various clays, the baking and curing of the lead mixture, its extrusion into leads, and the preparation and finishing of the wood casings. Petroski observes that pencil making also involves a knowledge of dyes, shellacs, resins, clamps, solvents, paints, woods, rubber, glue, printing ink, waxes, lacquer, cotton, drying equipment, impregnating processes, high-temperature furnaces, abrasives, and mixing” (18).