As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I seem to only associate electronic things with the term technology. For example, I never thought of a book as being considered technology; and until watching this documentary, I never thought of a pen as being such either. But seeing the process of it evolving from a quill, made me realize otherwise.

I thought it was really neat seeing the one man in the documentary explain how to write with the early fountain pens, while at the same time seeing it being done up close. The way that the narrator described and showed the way of writing as a “push, pull” process was particularly cool. I was actually intrigued enough to try it with the fountain pens we were given for class, but it didn’t work very well, unfortunately.

In relation to the sound and camera work of the documentary,The Story of Writing part 4, one part that I thought was particularly well done, was from about 44:59-45:49. In this part the documentary showed the machines working to make the fountain pens. But rather than hearing the noises of the machines, there was music played over, almost as if it was made for the particular machines. It made the machines seem as if they were dancing to the beat of the music. This seemed to portray technology in a good light, even though the narrator seemed partial to old ways during some parts of the documentary. For example, referring to replacing calligraphy, the narrator stated, “technology has already demanded one new and ugly set of letter shapes with the computer.”