July 9, 2026, 5:15 PM

Daniel Rosenberg (University of Oregon)
The Pencil: Analog Technology in a Digital Age

This talk traces the history of a deceptively simple object, the wood case graphite pencil—from its origins in a sixteenth-century Cumbrian mine, through the industrial transformations of the Napoleonic era, to its afterlife in the age of the digital stylus. The argument develops from an unusual site of applied humanistic practice: a seminar in which students remote from the classroom study, use, and discuss pencils together via video conference to investigate what tactile knowledge means in a digital environment. Taking Douglas Engelbart’s 1962 “brick pencil” thought experiment as its central provocation, the talk asks what the pencil’s apparent simplicity conceals, and what it reveals about the tools we think with.

Please register by email at your earliest convenience:
appliedhumanities[at]hu-berlin.de
or click “RSVP” below