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 encounte...
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.
目录
· · · · · ·
THERE IS NO ALPHABET HERE 1
1 INCOMPATIBLE WITH MODERNITY 35
2 PUZZLING CHINESE 75
3 RADICAL MACHINES 123
4 WHAT DO YOU CALL A TYPEWRITER WITH NO KEYS? 161
5 CONTROLLING THE KANJISPHERE 195
· · · · · ·
(更多)
THERE IS NO ALPHABET HERE 1
1 INCOMPATIBLE WITH MODERNITY 35
2 PUZZLING CHINESE 75
3 RADICAL MACHINES 123
4 WHAT DO YOU CALL A TYPEWRITER WITH NO KEYS? 161
5 CONTROLLING THE KANJISPHERE 195
6 QWERTY IS DEAD LONG LIVE QWERTY 237
7 THE TYPING REBELLION 283
TOWARD A HISTORY OF CHINESE COMPUTING AND THE AGE OF INPUT 315
TABLE OF ARCHIVES 323
BIOGRAPHIES OF KEY HISTORICAL PERSONS ALPHABETIC BY SURNAME 325
CHARACTER GLOSSARY 329
NOTES 337
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SOURCES 401
INDEX 457
STUDIES OF THE WEATHERHEAD EAST ASIAN INSTITUTE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 483
· · · · · · (收起)
... Indeed, if this book can be said to have one primary argument, it is that we must venture into the technological abyss to recover something of great importance that took shape here while the world was not paying attention -- something that cannot be captured through conventional, celebratory, impact-focused histories of technologies. This expedition, however, requires us to dispense with the easy iconoclasm of the character abolitionists, and equally so with any implicit desire for all histories of technology to be histories of triumph. Our story will be composed of what can only be called a long cascade of short-lived experiments, prototypes, and failures, where even the most successful devices lived only brief lives before disappearing into obscurity. [...] Counterintuitively, howeve... (查看原文)
Personal (embodiment), National (parties, literati struggle), International (imagination, economics and politics) 这三个层次最终还是回到中国读者的“我”，这历史的层层叠叠与我们看似远却无比近，他们在我们牙牙学语的过程中对我们理念中的中文进行了深浅不一的裁剪，最终将我们造成了“avera...Personal (embodiment), National (parties, literati struggle), International (imagination, economics and politics) 这三个层次最终还是回到中国读者的“我”，这历史的层层叠叠与我们看似远却无比近，他们在我们牙牙学语的过程中对我们理念中的中文进行了深浅不一的裁剪，最终将我们造成了“average Chinese man"。正如作者引用布迪厄，embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history。两个问题：科学与技术在这本书里如何对话？技术又究竟是如何参与塑造了我们的身份思考想象意识？(展开)
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5 有用 家樂福的空調涼 2017-09-06 00:13:49
有趣，英文打字机的既有设计思路如何限制了西方世界对于中文打字机的想象。墨磊宁在这里顺带提了拼音系统、汉字在日韩和日式中文打字机在亚洲的历史等等。Aeon上那篇节选似乎还在下一本书里，期待。ps简体字版会是商务出吗？
3 有用 Peut-etre 2020-07-05 08:15:55
以很快的速度读了这本书，一个在20世纪初的外国人眼中完全无法完成的发明创造，在国外的实验，和国内的各种实践下产生了各种多样的成果。但是在毛时期，集中化的体制却总是在将机器，排字捡字的技术等各个领域做到各项统一，但是却避免不了民间自发的尝试和实践。很有意思，毛时期最终确定的中文打字机还是借鉴的日本的万能机。
5 有用 Orpheus 2019-07-27 22:19:43
两点印象深刻的：1. technolinguistics：打字机样式决定了语言的发展；2. 毛时代的标语定义了中文打字机的键盘
4 有用 廖芜 2018-12-17 04:23:21
Personal (embodiment), National (parties, literati struggle), International (imagination, economics and politics) 这三个层次最终还是回到中国读者的“我”，这历史的层层叠叠与我们看似远却无比近，他们在我们牙牙学语的过程中对我们理念中的中文进行了深浅不一的裁剪，最终将我们造成了“avera... Personal (embodiment), National (parties, literati struggle), International (imagination, economics and politics) 这三个层次最终还是回到中国读者的“我”，这历史的层层叠叠与我们看似远却无比近，他们在我们牙牙学语的过程中对我们理念中的中文进行了深浅不一的裁剪，最终将我们造成了“average Chinese man"。正如作者引用布迪厄，embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history。两个问题：科学与技术在这本书里如何对话？技术又究竟是如何参与塑造了我们的身份思考想象意识？ (展开)
1 有用 真猪奶茶 2018-03-14 03:32:19
the "western technology" is not just the tech made in the West