Analysis of an Academic Article

Throughout the article From Pencils to Pixels, Dennis Baron introduces a number of outside sources in order to further perpetuate what it is that he is trying to argue.  Baron employs one source in particular, named When Old Technologies Were New by Carolyn Marvin, in order to describe the uses of the telephone before it had reached ubiquity and before the general public had habituated to its existence.  This book describes not only the history and uses of various technologies, but also how the people of that time thought of them and how they were relevant to people's lives.  Marvin also has the goals of romanticizing the technology of the past and pointing out how ubiquitous these technologies are to the people of today.

Baron chooses to use this source twice while writing about the telephone.  Its first use references the sentences, "Once they became established, telephones were sometimes viewed as replacements for earlier technologies.  In some cities, news and sports broadcasts were delivered over the telephone, competing with the radio."  According to modern day thought, the radio and telephone have very different uses and in no way compete with one another in the aforementioned fashion.  

Though technologies in the modern era are converging, the pure radio and pure telephone are independent of each other.  There are some cellular devices that enable users to listen to music through MP3's, but this in no way competes with news delivered via radio broadcasting.  These same cellular devices, if they have an internet connection, can also stream music through a radio station website, but this also does not compete with the radio station as it streams directly from the source.  This thought process--that the uses and functions of a land-line telephone and radio do not overlap--presents the author with a problem.  If he simply says to himself that some people received their news via telephone, some may not believe him.  He therefore must allow a credible source to present the audience with this fact.  

Baron also uses Marvin in another instance.  In a later sentence still under the subheading entitled "The Telephone," he references Marvin's research when he says, " While the telephone company routinely monitored the contents of telephone calls, when transcripts of telephone conversations were first introduced as evidence in trials, phone companies argued that these communications were just as private and privileged as doctor-patient exchanges."  This is even more bewildering than the idea of having news delivered by telephone.  When envisioning a visit with a doctor, one imagines being alone with the doctor in order to discuss what may be personal matters in the privacy of an isolated room.  According to modern thought in regards to telephones, a phone call is often very casual and done on-the-go, very different than setting aside time to make an individual appointment with a medical professional.  Baron had to have a credible source persuade the audience to believe that this way of thought was at once common, and for this reason he makes reference to Marvin's work.  

Just as Dennis Baron sought the credibility of another source in order to highlight a point, so did Marvin.  Marvin decided to employ the credibility of a source that has since its inception been considered very credible by the nation as a whole by citing an individual article of the New York Times from October 13, 1877.  During this particular part of her book, Marvin is discussing the issues of confidentiality during telephone calls.  She, however, was not alive during these problems and therefore cannot provide first hand experience of the issues.  For this reason, she uses the evidence of an article that describes the issues of privacy during phone calls, which reporters of the time found and wrote about in one of the most credible mass-produced newspapers in the nation.

Both Baron's source and his source's source complicate his analysis of the telephone.  Baron's source, Marvin, complicates his analysis by adding an incredible amount of depth through a lot of careful research.  In addition to the fact that everything is carefully researched in Marvin's book, Marvin's ethos complicates Baron's analysis since she is an Associate Professor of Communications at the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania.  Since Baron is writing an academic article, he must seek the credibility of other academics, of which Marvin certainly is one.  Marvin's source, the New York Times, also complicates Baron's analysis of the telephone.  Rather than being carefully sought out research and published in an academic work, the New York Times provides believable first hand experience for Baron's claims.  Writing in the era in which Marvin was writing presents her with the difficulty of finding first hand experience during the telephone's early years.  The New York Times provides her with this evidence and indirectly provides Baron with this necessary evidence.

Works Cited

Baron, Dennis.  "Pencils to Pizels." Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois.  N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2009. <http://www.english.illinois.edu/-people-/faculty/debaron/essays/pencils.htm

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