I just spent a few minutes thinking about the way my digital pen perceieves the world. It is really an intersting device in the way it sees our world, things it writes and the passage of time.
When laying dormant on my desk or in its cradle the pen experiences the world like any other pen. When the cap is off and the pen is writing on normal paper it knows it is active, but doesn’t have any sense of where it is or what it is doing. On specially encoded paper the pen knows where it is at all times and can record exactly what it writes without fail. If I move to another notebook and turn to the same page number and continue writing, the pen thinks it is still on the same page and hasn’t changed notebooks, unless the “change notebook” block is checked in the front of the book first. With the simple action of letting the pen touch that box in the notebook it marks itself as changing books and the page number becomes valid again, it is a remarkable device. I have 4 digital notebooks in the house now, but I can only use one at a time without confusing the pen, however, the pen’s software on my primary desktop computer can take something I write in the subject box and know instantly how to place it in my electronic notebook, so again, a really useful device. I think the pen will be quite helpful in my academic life for taking notes and maybe even for taking care of certain assignments. Can anyone see me doing Calculus homework with this pen? I expect that I will have more electronic records of my homework, notes, etc than was even possible before.
I have given thought to creating a paper form for my own use and getting it printed with a unique dot-code pattern in it like the digital notesbooks have, it could be interesting, but somehow I expect that would be excessive.
The pen views the world quite blindly, knowing all it knows from its dot patterns and the motion of my hand across the page. This is perhaps the most simple-minded technological device I own, but it kicks ass!