Description

In China, the QWERTY keyboard and traditional typing practices are dead and have been reborn as innovative technolinguistic-cum-exstitential condition of writing referred to as “input”, or “Shuru”. In contrast to traditional typing methods, in which the typer relies on onto that we now refer to as “input” (shuru). In contrast to the world of “typing,” in which the typer relies on onte-to-one correspondence between symbols-upon-the-keys and symbols -upon-the-screen, “input” is more a form of telecommunication than inscription: the user sends out alphabetically coded transmission to onboard software known as an Input Method Editor (IME). The IME then returns to the user a menu of Chinese characters known as “candidates”. Thus, the Chinese computer user uses the QWERTY keyboard in an iterative process of code, candidacy, and confirmation.

The input system in China, however predates computers. The first input system was a 1940’s mechanical typewriter called MingKwai Chinese typewriter, invented by noted liguist and cultural commentor Lin Yutang. In this talk, historian Thomas S. Mullaney will chart out the historical origins of input and its evolution alongside evolving technologies.

Thomas S. Mullaney is a Professor of Chinese History at Stanford University. He is the author of Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China and Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation and Identity of China’s Majority.
His current book project, The Chinese Typewriter: A Global History, examines China’s development of a modern, nonalphabetic information infrastructure encompassing telegraphy, typewriting, word processing, and computing. This project has received three major awards and fellowships, including the 2013 Usher Prize, a three-year National Science Foundation fellowship, and a Hellman Faculty Fellowship.