Below are four photos capturing my written exercise. Underneath is my reflection.
I normally type, as it is easier for me to (re)write and (re)organize my text content. Writing by hand is comparatively much more time-consuming and laborious for me: when mistakes are made, such as when I realize I needed to include a word or sentence, it often requires “squishing” it into the content, or even manually erasing and rewriting parts of the text so that the readability remains intact. If I wanted to bring a paragraph or section up or down, that would be virtually impossible without a lot of additional work – for typing though, this is not an issue at all as I can simply copy and paste it as needed. As noted by Clement (1997), texts become more complex in design and layout: applications like Microsoft Word have enabled a ‘digitized’ way to divide, punctuate, colorize, and even visualize content. Since I wanted to avoid significant changes while writing by hand, I had to think carefully about what I wanted to write before putting pencil to paper for this exercise.
As new ideas often come to me while I’m in the process of writing, I prefer more mechanized forms of it as opposed to writing by hand. Typing provides me with a delicate balance of spontaneity and order, allowing me to make drastic alterations quickly without producing “messy” documentation.
During my undergraduate years, I found that most of my peers preferred to type out lecture notes. Bolter (2001) emphasized the concept of remediation when new text technologies and economies of writing emerge: for Gen Y and Gen Z, this mechanized form of writing enables us to quickly and easily (re)write and (re)organize content, as many of us became acculturated to this approach in the Information Age. Innis (2007) reinforces this by articulating that technological change often a major catalyst for cultural shifts, and in my view the digital era is no exception.
References
Bolter, Jay David. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print [2nd edition]. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Clement, Richard W. (1997). “Medieval and Renaissance book production (Links to an external site.)“. Library Faculty & Staff Publications. Paper 10. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/lib_pubs/10
Innis, Harold. (2007) Empire and Communications. Toronto: Dundurn Press