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The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age
The fascinating, untold story of how the Chinese language overcame unparalleled challenges and revolutionized the world of computing.
A standard QWERTY keyboard has a few dozen keys. How can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on such a device? In The Chinese Computer , Thomas Mullaney sets out to resolve this paradox, and in doing so, discovers that the key to this seemingly impossible riddle has given rise to a new epoch in the history of writing—a form of writing he calls “hypography.” Based on fifteen years of research, this pathbreaking history of the Chinese language charts the beginnings of electronic Chinese technology in the wake of World War II up through to its many iterations in the present day.
Mullaney takes the reader back through the history and evolution of Chinese language computing technology, showing the development of electronic Chinese input methods—software programs that enable Chinese characters to be produced using alphanumeric symbols—and the profound impact they have had on the way Chinese is written. Along the way, Mullaney introduces a cast of brilliant and eccentric personalities drawn from the ranks of IBM, MIT, the CIA, the Pentagon, the Taiwanese military, and the highest rungs of mainland Chinese establishment, to name a few, and the unexpected roles they played in developing Chinese language computing. Finally, he shows how China and the non-Western world—because of the hypographic technologies they had to invent in order to join the personal computing revolution—“saved” the Western computer from its deep biases, enabling it to achieve a meaningful presence in markets outside of the Americas and Europe.
An eminently engaging and artfully told history, The Chinese Computer is a must-read for anyone interested in how culture informs computing and how computing, in turn, shapes culture.
A standard QWERTY keyboard has a few dozen keys. How can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on such a device? In The Chinese Computer , Thomas Mullaney sets out to resolve this paradox, and in doing so, discovers that the key to this seemingly impossible riddle has given rise to a new epoch in the history of writing—a form of writing he calls “hypography.” Based on fifteen years of research, this pathbreaking history of the Chinese language charts the beginnings of electronic Chinese technology in the wake of World War II up through to its many iterations in the present day.
Mullaney takes the reader back through the history and evolution of Chinese language computing technology, showing the development of electronic Chinese input methods—software programs that enable Chinese characters to be produced using alphanumeric symbols—and the profound impact they have had on the way Chinese is written. Along the way, Mullaney introduces a cast of brilliant and eccentric personalities drawn from the ranks of IBM, MIT, the CIA, the Pentagon, the Taiwanese military, and the highest rungs of mainland Chinese establishment, to name a few, and the unexpected roles they played in developing Chinese language computing. Finally, he shows how China and the non-Western world—because of the hypographic technologies they had to invent in order to join the personal computing revolution—“saved” the Western computer from its deep biases, enabling it to achieve a meaningful presence in markets outside of the Americas and Europe.
An eminently engaging and artfully told history, The Chinese Computer is a must-read for anyone interested in how culture informs computing and how computing, in turn, shapes culture.
376 pages, Hardcover
First published May 28, 2024
About the author
Thomas S. Mullaney
7 books45 followersThomas 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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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 31, 2024
You should read this + if you live within ~50 miles of me and want to borrow my uncorrected page proof you are welcome to it
June 11, 2024
The online media-censorships incl disallowing speaking/typing the full words/phrases, deleting online comments, disabling of comments, shutting down online forums, and no-show of full live search results have caused the amnesia of characters, not the so called term ‘hypography’. Once you control people’s memories you control the empire, through symbols and narratives’ manipulations.
The observation of typing-by-first letter only proves human nervous system’s powerful reconstructive/self-healing mechanism which lays right inside of each human. And gyri could easily rebuild new paths to make new habits work smoothly. Of course it also narrows people’s view if they continue not using pens and pencils to write and relying more on AI’s thinking-for-humans techs. Yet the caetextia (not just in ADHD) - the loss of context is strictly tied to the control of the memories under disguises of ‘governmental safety’ purposes, and that, is the main reason. The author has obviously lost the focal point and explained it without clarity but absurdity.
The observation of typing-by-first letter only proves human nervous system’s powerful reconstructive/self-healing mechanism which lays right inside of each human. And gyri could easily rebuild new paths to make new habits work smoothly. Of course it also narrows people’s view if they continue not using pens and pencils to write and relying more on AI’s thinking-for-humans techs. Yet the caetextia (not just in ADHD) - the loss of context is strictly tied to the control of the memories under disguises of ‘governmental safety’ purposes, and that, is the main reason. The author has obviously lost the focal point and explained it without clarity but absurdity.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews