{"id":155,"date":"2008-09-12T00:01:23","date_gmt":"2008-09-12T07:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=155"},"modified":"2008-09-12T12:47:20","modified_gmt":"2008-09-12T19:47:20","slug":"an-abundance-of-pencils","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=155","title":{"rendered":"An Abundance of Pencils"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe it’s just me, but I see way too many pencils used with computers and high technology. No, not real pencils, but pencils in advertising, logos, and icons. It has me puzzled.
\n
\nA pencil is probably the least high tech thing ever invented. Essentially it’s a wooden wrapper around some type of substance used to put marks on things. Originally the substance was lead, but then it became graphite. The concept is as old as cave painting.<\/p>\n

Somewhere along the line, an eraser was added to the basic pencil. (The rest of the English-speaking world calls it a rubber<\/em>.) It was a move of sheer genius, the first hardware Undo command.<\/p>\n

Pencils are still used in our culture, though outside of the artistic world, it’s rare to see a pencil these days. That is, unless you go full high tech, in which case the pencil makes some bizarre statement. Consider this advertisement:<\/p>\n

\"Pencil<\/p>\n

Who the hell needs a pencil with a laptop? Apparently the genius who created the image (not cheap) feels that buying a laptop (not cheap) will be encouraged by the reader (not cheap) identifying himself with someone who uses a pencil (cheap) and a computer (not cheap) at the same time.<\/p>\n

(Okay, maybe the pencil is there to show the relative size of the laptop? But then again, a coffee mug would work equally as well.)
\nThe pencil is obviously some sort of icon. In fact, pencils often find themselves used in computer icons more than any other office implement. Ever see something like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Originally that icon was used for word processing, but just about any program that involves creation \u2014 including programming tools \u2014 often employ the iconic pencil.<\/p>\n

The pencil is a silly piece of wood. Yet for some reason, its appearance in the high tech world is ubiquitous. A stapler or paper clip is more indicative of the office environment. And a coffee mug would be a better size comparison.<\/p>\n

Of course, the pencil isn’t alone. What about the folded newspaper next to a laptop? What’s with that? Who reads a newspaper when you have a computer? And don’t forget the eyeglasses (reading glasses?) on top the newspaper. Low-tech at its best.<\/p>\n

Yeah, well, I do confess to reading the newspaper in front of my computer. But I definitely don’t have a pencil next to any laptop \u2014 or desktop, for that matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe it’s just me, but I see way too many pencils used with computers and high technology. No, not real pencils, but pencils in advertising, logos, and icons. It has me puzzled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}