My project uses raspberries to create letters. They stand out on many surfaces, are fairly easy to read, and the juices can soak in and stain the orignal surface area. Raspberries are fairly portable, although the message is stuck in one place once its written. I found this project to be very difficult. Finding something natural for a process which itself is unnatural was challenging. Manguel's "The Shape of the Book" talks about presentation with writing. Using raspberries allowed me to create a very color message "Today is my birthday". "From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies" discusses the evolution of writing tools and the necessity of changes. Using raspberries fit into my needs, but would not work as a general purpose tool like a pen and paper or a computer. With computers, we may not leave a permenent record of events. Perhaps a PC will be dug up in a thousand years and no one will be able to retrive the contents of the disk. Just as my raspberries will deteriorate, so will the remains of our current world.

I prefer to write on a computer. I take course notes on one of my laptops. The legibility of my notes are very important and my handwriting is not the best. I also find that I can control the presentation and size of the content freely on a computer. I can control how it is printed, how it is displayed on the screen and what form I transmit to interested parties. Manguel and Baron's ideas work together on a computer to make the best possible experience.

The common relationship between the history of writing and the ideas of Ong and Plato are in the evolution of the tools to allow humans to express their thoughts in new ways and the necessity of change in cultural evolution.