Pictures and diagrams

In the reading material, Elizabeth Hill Boone mentioned a pictorial and diagrammatic recording system which people use besides words. This system is used in many aspects of science and culture; and tells very complicated relationships between different items in a clear way. I find that I use this system a lot and rely on it very often. The author stressed the diagramming system’s use in chemistry and mathematics a lot; however, I am very familiar with its use in my life. 
Actually, my first impression of diagrams was not very good. When I began to learn writing, the first thing I was asked to write down is what story a picture told. A picture is easy to read but really hard to write out. I always feel like that I am missing some details when I am writing out a picture. And when I grew up a little, teachers loved to give me homework such as previewing the next chapter, find the relationships between the concepts introduced and put all the concepts in order. Explaining all the relationships in words was definitely a huge amount of writing; so I always chose to draw that out. However, it was hard to find out the relations; it was even harder to put the concepts in right positions where could show the relations clearly. Fortunately, I have a computer with Microsoft Office Word. The technology is really useful in making diagrams, using which I can arrange the positions of those concepts easily. 
Not only showing the complex relations, a diagram itself can contain an incredible amount of information. Taking a two-dimensional diagram as an example, we can see that its two axes have meanings and units, the diagram itself has a title, and the curve records the correlation between two items now and can tell the tendency in future. It contains so much information that I do not know how to convey it into written words. 
I learn cell’s structure using a picture taken by ultra microscope; I find my classroom using a map of MSU; and I learn the differences of memories in the old and the young using a bar graph telling the results. I use the diagramming system everyday, in every aspect of my life. 

How does literacy shape technology? & How does technology shape literacy?

I’d like to answer the easier one–“How does technology shape literacy” first. Baron gave lot examples on how the computer changes literacy, such as adding animation, video, and sound to texts, students’ dependence on spell-check program, and the World Wide Web. I think technology is making more texts more easily available to more and more people; so with the development of technology, people should have literacy much more easily. And literacy has also changed to fit technology. It is obvious that we read, write and speak in almost a different language to what people use several hundred years ago. Even people living in the same time sometimes fail to understand each other’s texts because of change in literacy caused by technology, for example, a parent may find his daughter text messaging in “the language of Mars”.
About the next question, how does literacy shape technology, I think the point is that literacy may change the original usage of technology. Just like pencils were first made for woodworkers and computers were intended to perform numerical calculations, people most of the time do not intend to invent a technology to change the literacy, actually, some people are afraid of changes in literacy. However, sometimes, when the new technology gets connected to literacy, literacy is so attractive that technology deviates from its original track.