Nature is as Man Decrees

Nature is as Man Decrees

I found this assignment far more difficult than I thought it would be at first glance. While thinking about it on the way home from class, I discarded one idea after another because technology had touched nearly everything I would think of. As Dennis Baron, author of From Pencils to Pixels wrote, once we are used to certain technologies “we come to think of them as natural rather than techEven thinking about going to a national park, the truth is that just by setting it aside as a "natural" state...makes it in essence, not natural because were it not for the decrees of humanity, it would be over run with fast food stores and gas stations. In fact, sadly, writing is in one sense both creative and destructive to nature. A tree is destroyed for the very paper we write on. The question arose, is there really any such thing as natural in the 21st Century or is that a word that no longer applies in its truest sense. That, of course, led to thoughts on just what is "natural." My instinctive definition of natural is that it is not influenced or hampered or changed by humanity. So in some regards I think my initial conclusion is correct, that at least here in the Midwestern area of United States, finding something in nature that was not influenced in some way by technology or human interference might prove impossible. So the words that would end up being my project ran round and round in my head on the long ride home, “Nature is as man decrees, hedged by his technologies.”

Later on while still pondering exactly what to do in order to "create" a writing technology, I ended up, most often coming back to..."Well, if I was a Native American in this area and I wished to write something...what would I use?" We tend to have the idea that the people native to the area didn't use technology and thus could offer suggestions on what is natural. Still, that brings to the forefront, what is technology, because in reality the natives did use technology, if a pencil is considered technology, as Dennis Baron in "From Pencils to Pixels" asserts it is. He defines technology as “a way of engineering materials in order to accomplish an end” (37). So in this regard, sewing, tomahawks, and all the other tools we think of as Native American are technologies even if we don't see them on the same level as a computer.