The Humble Pencil, The Mighty Computer
The pencil is general, yet specific. Ideas can be hashed out with ease to gauge their potential. The marks can be vague enough so one doesn’t judge the execution, but instead judges the potential of the idea. This is why I can’t come up with ideas on computers. Computers are too specific; they have too many degrees of separation between my mind and the canvas. With a pencil, it starts from my brain, moves down my arm, straight out my hand to the paper. Atoms transfer from the tip of the pencil to the surface of the paper. I can see the sheet fill up. With the computer, I have to turn on the computer, grab the mouse, launch the software, select the tool I wish to use, think about how to use that tool, and then worry about the mark that it makes. The beauty of a pencil is you don’t need to think about how to use it. It’s instinctive. A five-year-old knows how to use a pencil just as well as a sixty-year-old. The pencil is the great equalizer.
(Emphasis mine.)
