Bolter Ch. 2

          In chapter 2, Bolter focuses on defining technology and writing together. He wanted to make sure it was understood that writing is always changing but that there are underlying things about writing that technology could never really change. No matter what decade it is, "The writer always needs a surface on which to make his or her marks and a tool with which to make them, and these materials become part of the contemporary definition of writing"(Bolter 15,16). Bolter makes it clear that writing has developed throughout history through different means of technology from a printing press or Linotype machine to electric presses and computers. He explains how it requires different skills to writing with quill and parchment than to writing with a printing press than to write with a computer. Yet he finds a way to bring them together by claiming that, "all writing entails method, the intention of the writer [is] to arrange verbal ideas in a space for later examination by a reader"(16).