Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabet in mind. This book is about those encounters -- in particular thousands of Chinese characters versus the typewriter and its QWERTY keyboard. Thomas Mullaney describes a fascinating series of experiments, prototypes, failures, and successes in the century-long quest for a workable Chinese typewriter.
The earliest Chinese typewriters, Mullaney tells us, were figments of popular imagination, sensational accounts of twelve-foot keyboards with 5,000 keys. One of the first Chinese typewriters actually constructed was invented by a Christian missionary, who organized characters by common usage (but promoted the less-common characters for "Jesus" to the common usage level). Later came typewriters manufactured for use in Chinese offices, and typewriting schools that turned out trained "typewriter girls" and "typewriter boys." Still later was the "Double Pigeon" typewriter produced by the Shanghai Calculator and Typewriter Factory, the typewriter of choice under Mao. Clerks and secretaries in this era experimented with alternative ways of organizing characters on their tray beds, inventing an arrangement method that was the first instance of "predictive text."
Today, after more than a century of resistance against the alphabetic, not only have Chinese characters prevailed, they form the linguistic substrate of the vibrant world of Chinese information technology. The Chinese Typewriter, not just an "object history" but grappling with broad questions of technological change and global communication, shows how this happened.
Thomas S. Mullaney is Associate Professor of History at Stanford University and the author of Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China.
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Personal (embodiment), National (parties, literati struggle), International (imagination, economics and politics) 這三個層次最終還是迴到中國讀者的“我”,這曆史的層層疊疊與我們看似遠卻無比近,他們在我們牙牙學語的過程中對我們理念中的中文進行瞭深淺不一的裁剪,最終將我們造成瞭“average Chinese man"。正如作者引用布迪厄,embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history。兩個問題:科學與技術在這本書裏如何對話?技術又究竟是如何參與塑造瞭我們的身份思考想象意識?
评分the "western technology" is not just the tech made in the West
评分拿費奬瞭
评分林語堂的明快中文打字機奠定瞭輸入法的基礎…
评分兩點印象深刻的:1. technolinguistics:打字機樣式決定瞭語言的發展;2. 毛時代的標語定義瞭中文打字機的鍵盤
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