Annie Parks-Period 3. One day I entered my Economics class with my normal preconceived thoughts of how the world worked. Then out of nowhere I heard that I was about to be challenged on a subject that seemed so menial and obvious that I had never even given it a second thought. My teacher introduced us to an article that was written in 1958 by Leonard E. Read. This article, called “I, Pencil.” promised that after we were done reading we would be convinced that no one on this entire planet knows how to make a pencil. Yes, you heard me correctly, a pencil. As our usual argumentative and “know it all” Ursuline selves, the whole class immediately and frantically started to ask how this idea was even possible and were convinced that our teacher had to be kidding. He asks us to keep an open mind and continue reading. We finish reading the article and I look around to see the reaction of my fellow classmates. They all somewhere along the road jumped on board and fully believed that Read was right and that no one knew how to make pencil and for that matter no one knew how to make anything!
One of Read’s arguments stated that, “Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make me. Man can no more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being than he can put molecules together to create a tree,” which is necessary for the wood in a pencil. Not to undermine Read’s intelligence, but we all read above that his prerogative was to prove that no man knows how to make a pencil not to prove that no human can single handedly make a pencil. The word “know” is defined as to have (information of some kind) in your mind. Nowhere does it states that one must be able to construct what the information describes. Knowing and doing are two completely different terms. In this case, I would have to argue that the point that I am incapable of creating trees because I cannot form molecules to do so, which I completely agree with, is completely unrelated to the issue at hand. People know or could learn that the wood from the tree is necessary and then learn how to acquire it then move it and form the wood into a pencil. We are generously blessed with gifts God gave, such as trees, and we must use them to make what we need and that’s exactly what we are doing. We are using the means that are given to us to make the things we want and need. Knowing how to create those things means that how they came to be is completely irrelevant in the dispute of knowing how to make something or not. From the minute the first action towards physically constructing the pencil begins is when the process of knowing how a pencil is made begins. This is true because part of knowing how to make a pencil is knowing that it’s made of parts like the graphite and wood. Someone can explain when those parts are introduced into the process and what they do to the resources to make them into the pencil and boom! A pencil is made and the steps are known. What more is there to know? Do we need to be able to physically be able to form a tree? No we do not because the topic was not to make a tree. We can spell out the very ways a pencil is made, but doing needs to be involved.
Another one of Read’s arguments is that, “There isn’t a single person in all these millions, including the president of the pencil company, who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit of know-how.” This means that there are so many people involved in actual process, from the miners of the coal to produce heat in the factory all the way to actual hands on workers on the production lines. The coal miners only solely mine the coal and the factory workers only construct the part of the pencil they were taught to make. Just because these specific groups of people only participate in one part of the process of constructing the pencil does not mean they do not know how the process is done. I do agree with the author when he describes how the people who are a part of the process fail to understand fully what their parts or resources are going to because no miner is sitting there praising himself for giving the gift of a writing utensil to a small school child. However, by dividing the process up between various groups allows more pencils to me made provides more jobs. Losing the uniqueness of personally crafting an object is the price we pay for producing goods on a larger scale allowing the pencil to be cheaper. In my understanding of the word “know,” I believe that we know how to make all man made items on our Earth because if we did not then how would they come to in existence. We have to know how to make a couch or how would we know to build a wooden frame then sew and stuff cushions etc.? If I went along with Read’s argument then how would he explain how the pieces of a couch came to together to make a couch?
Read seems to make a pretty big deal about this concept of knowing how to make something and I think that can be due to the fact that he lived in a different time. Though they had machines in factories, they were nothing close to the caliber we have today. This man was sixty when he wrote this which allowed him to go through life realizing that are workers were becoming more like parts of a machine and less human. The assembly line was introduced when he was fifteen. In the assembly line he saw people who had great skill and craftsmanship turned into mundane robots in line. Knowing how to do something had changed and is constantly changing over the years because our resources and what is becoming readily available is always changing as well. Back in 1958, knowing the details of how to make something was more important because they had fewer technological resources. People needed to have more knowledge about a topic in their minds because they could not rely on machines and new technology to assist them. I believe that this is the reason why he made such a scene about the lack of knowledge about a pencil in the first place. Knowing how to make a pencil back then included the hands of committed workers and now “knowing” is turning on a machine. A direct example of our rapidly changing world is a new technology known as 3D printing. This new innovative printing is done by creating layers of an object using “ink” that is not ink but, substances such as plastic or even chocolate to create an object of your choice (within the given limits). They are making objects such as earrings, a guitar, prosthetic limbs, and machine parts. Our society is going from barely knowing the basic construction of a pencil to not being able to identify graphite as the tip. These great innovations (though robbing future youth of knowing the construction of basic objects) are extremely groundbreaking and have the ability to simplify our lives. As more of these inventions are brought to the surface the closer and closer we are to making Read’s discussion about the pencil less relevant.
I believe Read is wrong when he says no one is able to identify how to make a pencil because in our world today making a pencil is using the resources that were given to us by God and constructing them into the object of our desire. The process has changed. The person who knows how to hire the workers, obtain the resources and build the factory is the person who know how to build a pencil will all change in the future because the concept of knowing how something is made will have a different meaning completely. An expert in making something will become the man who pushed the button on the new 3D printer and not the person who has the craft at making whatever a certain object.
Works Cited
D’Aveni, Richard A. “March 2013.” 3-D Printing Will Change the World. N.p., Mar. 2013. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.
Goss, Jennifer L. “Henry Ford and the Assembly Line.” About.com 20th Century History. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2013.
Hornberger, Jacob G. “The Legacy of Leonard E. Read.” The Future of Freedom Foundation. N.p., 1 Sept. 1991. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
Read, Leonard E. “”I, Pencil”” Read, I, Pencil. N.p., 1999. Web. 11 Dec. 2013.
Webster, George. “How 3D Printing Will Change Your Life Forever.” CNN. Cable News Network, 2013. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
Bear Market 
Annie, this is a brave attempt to contradict Read, but I’m afraid that you miss the point. He is not at all concerned about people not knowing how to make a pencil, he is rather explaining how awesome it is that the PRICE SYSTEM allows for all these tiny bits of know-how to come together and allow us to make things, even though no one knows the whole picture of how anything is made. Read’s argument of whether anyone can know how to make a pencil does not at all rest, as you seem to think, on whether one can actually *make* it. The real issue is that no one can even *describe* how a pencil gets made. For example, you may be under the impression that Read does just that in his paper, but actually all he does in the essay is show how he *doesn’t* know the whole process. What do I mean? Take a look at the essay again, and you will see that he merely suggests general areas of what is involved, but never traces every single branch. Why not? Because it is literally impossible. Because in the end, it is *all* connected. To *describe* the production of a simple modern pencil would require being able to *describe* every single contributing factor, down to how it is that one makes a burger to feed the guy who is cutting the trees for the pencil. “But that’s easy!” you might say. Well, except that describing how to make that burger would require describing everything about raising cows, everything about how to make a stove for cooking the meat, everything about growing grain and making flour and making bread, and each of those things would require being able to trace how each of the tools to make THOSE things are produced, etc., etc., etc., basically without end. The possibilities are infinite. And again, I’m not talking about being able to *make* a pencil, I’m just talking about being able to *describe* the process of making a pencil — to describe it fully, I mean. It simply cannot be done.
But that’s not the important point. The important point is that that INFINITY of know-hows that no one can trace automatically comes together to produce all sorts of products in ways that no one can describe, and that those know-hows efficiently interact with each other by means of a price system in ways that it would be impossible for anyone to deliberately organize. I hope that makes things clearer.
Mr. Aparicio