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  • >> up to recently at Google Research recently joined Google Android. As a native Chinese,

  • I was very fascinated by Tom's work on Chinese ethnic group classification. It's actually

  • interesting from a computer science point of view today that, how would you classify

  • people into--who had been living, you know, who have had patch of land for thousand, thousand

  • of years and how do you divide them into different ethnic groups? What features would you use?

  • Is it--is the language that they speak? Is it the proximity in geography or is it the

  • clothes they wear or how they marry? What features do we use to classify them to different

  • categories? And Tom did the most thorough study of this, that how--officially was classified

  • in the 1950s with the pretty important political ramifications in terms of representation even

  • though most of the representations in province of China was talking but still, it was important

  • for all groups to be represented. And he traced and analyzed how that project went and it

  • was fascinating. But today, he's going to talk about another topic that is just as fascinating

  • which truly is interesting to me because as a research scientist I've devoted a big portion

  • to my career and study how to enter information into computers. And Tom's study shows that

  • much of this work we do today on mobile phones, on touch screens are actually foreshadowed

  • by what Chinese engineers and inventors have done in the past many decades. So, I'm very

  • pleased to be able to invite him to give a talk on this topic today. So, please welcome,

  • Tom Mullaney. >> MULLANEY: Thank you very much. Can you

  • all hear me okay? Excellent. So, it's a great pleasure to be here and an honor and I want

  • to thank Xu Man Jai for inviting me to speak with you today. The talk of the paper has

  • changed many, many times, many iterations. So, we're going to keep the main title of

  • the Chinese typewriter in Silicon Valley but the subtitle has changed a little bit from

  • the abstract to how Chinese typists invented predictive text during the height of Maoism.

  • To give you a little bit of context, the broader set of questions that I'm working on right

  • now in a book, I guess tentatively titled, The Chinese Typewriter, a Global History,

  • is a broader story of 19th and 20th century China which pretty closely connected to the

  • history of European--Euro-American Imperialism is the question of how to render compatible--how

  • to render the Chinese language compatible with the set of information technology such

  • as the telegraph, the typewriter and later forms, which almost in their DNA have been

  • so closely connected to alphabets or more generally speaking, to languages with a very

  • limited set of modules, be they alphabets or syllabaries. And so, there was, during

  • the 19th century and 20th century and even today, this very fundamental question that

  • I post up here, is Chinese script, not the language as a whole, but is script, the Chinese

  • script, Chinese characters, are they compatible with modernity or must they be jettisoned

  • so that China can modernize. And this was a major question in the 19th and 20th Centuries

  • with many people saying no, we have to get rid of characters, use English, even Esperanto

  • in order to modernize. And many even more who saw--who used the imagery of the Chinese

  • typewriter in particular, as kind of proof of this. I say proof in--I italicized that

  • with my voice so as to say that the proof came in a sort of concocted imagined ideas

  • of what a Chinese typewriter must theoretically look like. That would be an immense machine

  • with thousands of keys upon which it takes even five people to type and so forth. And

  • so, you see, some of the earliest and most derogatory and racist perceptions of this

  • from turn of the century that top one is from an article in 1900 all the way through the

  • kind of dregs of B movie culture with a Tom Selleck movie, the Chinese typewriter into

  • the famous dance coined by MC Hammer in You Can't Touch This, known as the Chinese typewriter,

  • that dance was called, because it was meant to mimic what a typist must look like as they

  • move across a massive keyboard into the Simpsons and so forth. So, that is to say that within

  • the story of--the question can--is Chinese--are Chinese characters compatible with modernity?

  • The Chinese typewriter in particular became a kind of icon for those who said no, it's

  • not. And it's a surprisingly durable icon. And what I'm here to talk about today is that

  • parallel to the story, there's a far richer, more significant and interesting story of

  • those who did not give up on this idea, that Chinese characters could be compatible--or

  • rendered compatible with technologies designed without Chinese in mind. And I'm charting

  • in my own work the kind of larger history about this involving Chinese telegraphy, typewriting,

  • Braille, and indexing systems and so forth. But what I'm going to talk with you about

  • today, if I had to kind of make this relevant for an audience that is obviously very interested

  • in deep history, but is also setting out to build things and make things is that when

  • I see the Chinese typewriter, I don't see this. I see a machine whose history is an

  • incredible repository of designed inspiration and some of the most eccentric and brilliant

  • innovation, most of which never saw the light of the day, never materialized into forms,

  • but some of the most brilliant and penetrating analysis and innovation of human-machine interaction

  • of input of data structuring and many other dimensions. And so, in particular, what I

  • want to talk about today is a kind of episode that takes place in the 1950s in China. Now,

  • this is going to be the sort of context and I will be explaining this in a bit. This is

  • a few snap shots of different Chinese typewriters in the 20th century. The episode comes from

  • November of 1956 in the pages of the most--the most widely circulated Chinese newspaper,

  • the People's Daily which featured an article in that fall--one of the fall issues of a

  • typist in the city of Luoyang in China that had performed this unparalleled feat and was

  • reported to have using a Chinese typewriter whose operation I'll explain in a second,

  • using a Chinese typewriter had typed at speeds verging on 80 characters per minute. Now,

  • I invite you not to immediately compare that to QWERTY inputs or things like that, because

  • there, I'm going to try to explain that they're largely irrelevant comparisons but the important

  • comparison is how fast had a typewriter--a Chinese typewriter been at that point. Roughly

  • speaking, if you look at a lot of the archival documents, teaching manuals and so forth in

  • the '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s and on, the average typing speed at this moment was about 20 to

  • 30 characters per minute. So, this thing--this event, this person doing this, if it was real,

  • represented a three-fold increase in speed of input, if you can think of it that way,

  • without any substantial changes to the kind of mechanism of the machine. This was not

  • a new typewriter. This was some sort of change that had taken place to the existing machine.

  • Now, to give you a sense of how the machine works, how these various models up here work,

  • you'll notice that there are--there's a tray bed, if you see right here in the [INDISTINCT]

  • model here. There's a tray bed on the 1960s Double Pigeon model, of 35 characters by 70

  • characters. These are free-floating metal slugs. If you were to pick up this tray and

  • turn it over, they would all fall out. There is a tray selector that can operate along

  • an XY axis and actually can XY--and then the tray bed itself which can move left and right

  • along one axis. And so, you kind of move both, bring the selector in positions, pushed down

  • on the lever and the--something pokes up the slug from the bottom, it is grabbed, inked,

  • it strikes the surface of the platen and then it's returned into the same location. That's

  • the basic functioning of these machines. Now then--so, if you can imagine, this is about--this

  • is 2450 characters. So, the most important dimension of this is taxonomy, is the organization

  • and disposition of these characters. Now, the way that in the 1920s and '30s and '40s

  • characters on the--on the--on the machine had been organized will be very familiar to

  • any--anyone in the room who reads or speaks Chinese, but for those of you who don't--excuse

  • me, it was the--a system known as the radical-stroke system. And basically, this system which dates

  • back to the Ming Dynasty, popularized in the Ching Dynasty, that is into, roughly around

  • the 16th to 17th or 18th Centuries, we're talking about, is a system by which the tens

  • of thousands of characters in the Chinese language are subdivided into a set of 214

  • classes or categories based on the primary component out of which the character is built.

  • So for example, one category of these 214 is the person radical category, the shape

  • here. And here are some examples of characters that fit within it, that are built out of

  • it. The--another radical class is the water radical class here, these three strokes and

  • you can see two characters that would fit into that. And then within each class, the

  • characters are organized according to the number of strokes it takes to produce them.

  • So the character Ta, meaning he would come before the character To because it takes more

  • strokes of the pen or the brush to write the character To. This is the way that dictionaries

  • have been organized and the way the typewriter had been organized. What the article in 1956

  • suggested was that this typist in the city of Luoyang had departed, had kind of taken

  • a radical departure if you will from the system and reorganize the tray bed according to a

  • natural language arrangement. And so if we give--if we take a sample, a very small sample

  • of the 2,500 or so characters--those of you who don't read Chinese, follow with me now.

  • The yellow--the highlighted yellow character is the character Tong. And the important thing

  • about this is that unlike the previous organization which--in which that character would have

  • been put next to characters that has nothing to do with. In this reorganization of the

  • tray bed in 1950s, all of the adjacent--or many of the adjacent characters in the Morse

  • neighborhood, the eight cells around it were--the disposition of those was such that they could

  • be combined with the character Tong in order to produce a real word. Most words in Chinese

  • are actually made of two characters not one. And so for example, this--the yellow character

  • and--can be combined with what's below it, [SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE] meaning, at

  • the same time. To the right, [SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE] in the same period. And

  • then invertedly with the character above it, [SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE] meaning, shared.

  • And then if you can do this with each of the characters on this, every character is both

  • a center and a periphery can be in combined or combinable with everything around it. And,

  • you know, we have to--when we look at an article like this from the People's Daily, which--we

  • have to be very careful. We have to be very careful as to the story and not to believe

  • what we read and kind of follow up. There had been many stories of model workers in

  • the--in the--in the height of Maoism. Model laborers who out produce their quota. Model

  • farmers who out produce their grain quota. And here we have a model typist who had out

  • produced their typing quota, their character quota. So we have to be very careful here.

  • But interestingly, is having spent quite a long time checking up on this, we see that

  • this actually happened and was--I'm going to suggest here, one of the earliest implementations

  • of a system of kind of techno-linguistic system that we now think of as predictive text or

  • natural language arrangement or however we want to--we want to describe it. So more broadly

  • I think before I get into the nitty-gritty of this, I think it's pretty self-evident

  • but let me spell it out that if this is true, then what this alerts us to is the need to

  • look very--much more seriously at a techno-linguistic innovation in three contexts where we don't

  • often go looking for it, China, the Chinese language and in this case mechanical pre-computer

  • system. At the very least, predictive text is not associated with Chinese Language, not

  • associated with innovations in China and it's certainly a very rarely or ever associated

  • with things in the pre-computer information age. So if we--if we--we have to begin by

  • asking the question--this will be relevant here in a second. The primary innovation that

  • I'm talking about here is obviously not a--not the design of a new machine but a new interface.

  • This is a new interface between a Chinese typist and the machine. And so we have to

  • ask the question, was there a context for this typist in Luoyang to kind of pick up

  • and move around the modules on this interface? Was this a total radical--a totally radical

  • act, a very unprecedented act or was there a context for this? And there was a context

  • for this. And the simple--the simple framework for this is that unlike the story of the typewriter

  • and specifically the semiotic interface of a typewriter in every other part of the world.

  • Be it--let's refer to languages more particularly, be it English, French, Italian, Russian, Hebrew,

  • Thai, Cambodian, Arabic and so forth, in the story of which the semiotic interface of each

  • of these typewriters at some point stabilized into QWERTY, AZERTY, and--QWERTZ and so forth.

  • That the story of the machine interface of the Chinese typewriter never stabilized, was

  • never meant to stabilize and was understood as something that would constantly need to

  • be adjusted or changed by the operator through a constant process of optimization. Why is

  • that? The reason for this is--comes in the fact that the basic--let me put this up here,

  • that the basic structure of the Chinese typewriter was based on the system called common usage.

  • So there are many more than 2,400, 500--2,450 characters in Chinese, there are tens of thousands.

  • The idea of the common usage Chinese typewriter, and that's what we're talking about, is to

  • select the most frequently used characters and to put them on the tray bed. And then

  • the rest of them would either be in a box about 5,000 characters of less commonly used

  • characters and then anything else beyond that would have to be written by hand, okay? Now,

  • the sort of--the issue for us here is that no matter how perfectly you chose these 2,450

  • characters, no one set would be perfect for every given context. In a police office versus

  • a bank, the common usage character would be different from one to the other. And so therefore

  • a typist in a police office--police office would have to take an uncommon character and

  • put it on the tray bed, and the same thing for a typist in a bank or a government office

  • and so forth. The other, there's a diachronic or a temporal part of this optimization story

  • which is that from moment to moment, common usage characters fell out of existence, uncommon

  • characters became common and some very--some prime examples of that pertain to the administrative

  • geography of China. So for example in the--in the teens and early 20s, there was a province

  • known as Fung--I'm sorry, as Jiuli Province, so--but--so the characters Jiu and Li both

  • appear on the machine in the teens. After roughly the mid 20s, the province of Jiuli

  • was abolished as an administrative region and was divided into a set of new provinces.

  • Now, what happens to the tray bed? The character Jiu is very, very common in many, many, many

  • other Chinese words and so it was kept. The character Li is very uncommon on its own and

  • so it was judicent, the same thing happened with the province known as Fung Tien, which

  • no longer exists. And after this transition, you can compare the tray beds and see that

  • the character Tien which means sky, very, very common is kept and the character which

  • means Fung which means to present something to a superior was a very, very, uncommon character

  • in--and so it was judicent. So this is all to say that there was a kind of built-in--already

  • a built-in kind of churning optimization process in which these operators in 1956 would have

  • been operating. It's very interesting that--so actually, let me--let me tell you a little

  • bit more about the structure of the tray bed here. Here are three different tray beds from

  • three different periods just to get this impression in your mind. The red region are the most

  • commonly used characters. All of these are commonly used but these are the most common

  • used characters and then the dark blue or the kind of purplish regions are the secondarily

  • common usage. And I'll talk about that kind of light blue in a second. So there was even

  • a structuring of frequency within the tray bed that will become relevant in just a moment.

  • And what's interesting about this is it's not just--the optimization of the machine

  • was not simply at the level of the tray bed and the disposition of characters on it, it

  • was also a question of how a Chinese typist would undergo training and how they train

  • their body. And to put this in a comparative context again, because it helps illustrate

  • the point, in Roman alphabet or Cyrillic, or Hebrew, or Arabic or so forth typing, the

  • ideal state of being when you are typing is known as blind typing. If you are sitting

  • there staring at the keyboard, you better go and practice a bit more. You know, the

  • idea is that you can look at the manuscript or the text and then have a kind of non-visual

  • relationship with the interface and just go. This way of interacting with the machine makes

  • a lot of sense in alphabetic and syllabaristic languages and makes no sense and was never

  • endorsed in the case of Chinese typewriting. For the Chinese typist and I put up some various

  • typing manuals from different points in 20th century Chinese history actually emphasized

  • the need for the typist to refine to ever greater and greater ability their vision,

  • and their memory, and their peripheral vision. And I'll give one example. The idea--one of--one

  • of the most important parts of being a good typist was to always be anticipating both

  • cognitively and somatically the next character, the next character, the next character. So,

  • if you were to go to one character that is all the way over to the right of A tray bed,

  • I know that my laser point doesn't work very well. Let's say you need a character over

  • here, and then you know--you're looking at the manuscript, you see the next character

  • and you realize that it's over here, you need to start kind of orienting your body in such

  • a way TO getting ready to move it back in that direction. You know. And if you don't

  • do that, you'll still be able to type but you'll type very slowly. So that is to say

  • that even in the training of the Chinese typist because of the sort of almost built-in affordances

  • and limitations, constraints and abilities of the machine that we see in analog to this

  • in which--in the way that a typist would train in China as opposed to many other techno-linguistic

  • context. One other very quick example that I like very much pertains to the--what those

  • of you who have read any [INDISTINCT] would know is materiality of signifiers and in a

  • more concrete sense means that the typist would have to adjust the strength, the force

  • that they use to press down on the typing lever, depending upon the number of strokes

  • in the character, because the number of strokes in the character translated directly into

  • the weight of the character. And so, what--some characters are one stroke like the character

  • "e" meaning one, is just one horizontal stroke. And then there's another one for dragon long,

  • which has many--more than 20 strokes. If you use the dragon strength force on the character

  • one, you could puncture the paper and therefore have to start all--start all over again. And

  • so this idea of--kind of optimization anticipation operated on many, many levels. Okay but this

  • is--this is kind of necessary but insufficient set of conditions to get us to this more radical

  • change, the semiotic change, this change of interface that takes place I'm arguing in

  • the 1950s, and so how do we get to a place where in 1956 someone actually sits down and

  • removes all of the characters from the tray bed and then rebuilds some sort of natural

  • language arrangement of all of the characters. How do we get to the place where someone would

  • feel mandated or authorized or inspired to do that? The question of this is really connected

  • to the politics of the 1950s--the politics of the 1950s. And in particular, a politics

  • that was, within 20th century China, unique to the Maoist Period, which was a centrally

  • endorsed, proletarianization of knowledge that is kind of user-led innovation in a sense

  • where in a vast number of different expert domains including seismology, paleontology,

  • medicine, the State--the Central State in Beijing and the Communist Party was advocating

  • mass participation of none elite, kind of, participants in these otherwise expert systems,

  • and was also advocating the really--the overturning of knowledge systems. And the kind of, if

  • you want to say--if you want to put it in the kind of a prose format to take much more

  • seriously folk knowledge, to take much more seriously the knowledge that everyday people

  • have. And so there does seem to be a strong correlation between this advocacy that's--and

  • mandate in authorization that's being issued from the party states and the type of experimentation

  • we see in the 1950s. So, its very, very difficult to locate the origins of moments like this,

  • and in many cases finding an exact point is not all that important. But if we had to--if

  • we had to choose the first moment in which we see a natural language arrangement of Chinese

  • characters in an information technology environment, it takes place not in typewriting but in typesetting.

  • In the City of KaiFeng with the work of this--a typesetter named Zhang Jiying. And Zhang Jiying

  • worked as a typesetter both in the pre-Communist era in the 1940s and then into the early--into

  • the Maoist Period in the '50s and he posted very respectable typesetting speeds throughout

  • most to his career, and his character rack, the rack where all the characters were displayed

  • for his use were also organized, largely according to the Radical Stroke System, the same one

  • that we saw before. Around 1951-'52, inspired by this new mandate for the proletarianization

  • of knowledge mass participation and so forth, he began to reorganize these characters, to

  • maximize the adjacency of those characters that go together. Some of the kinds of prime

  • examples for these come from the name of the Press he worked at, the Xin hua she. So he

  • said, well I'm constantly setting Xin hua she so why should I reach around this character

  • rack, why not just put them next to each other? Another example is Ge ming, Revolution. I'm

  • constantly saying ge ming or constantly setting this type, so might as well put them together,

  • and then my favorite is, mei di, American Imperialist. This was the time--this was the

  • time of the Korean War in the first really Nationwide Campaign of the Maoist Period which

  • was Aide Korea--Resist America, Aide Korea as--in connection with the Korean War. So

  • these phrase mei di was said over and over and over again. Now what's interesting is

  • it's very hard to say, was Zhang Jiying inspired by this--by this central new mandate of the

  • Communist Party or were many people doing this and we just don't know about it. It's

  • very hard to say the one thing that we do know is that the party state was not only

  • advocating or promoting this type of proletarianization of knowledge but whenever it happened in a

  • locale or a region, they were publicizing it and popularizing it. So Zhang Jiying was

  • actually--became something of a little media star for a few years. He was--he was featured

  • in the People's Daily, there was a book published about his method, he was sent on a paid tour

  • of China, to various printing houses to tell people about his method, the Central Broadcasting

  • Company filmed him doing his job and he was eventually admitted into the party, and so

  • he kind of, was a--his method was celebrated. It's very quickly after that celebration of

  • his method that we start to see the same application of natural language arrangement of the--of

  • key--of characters on the Chinese Typewriter. And this brings us back to the 1950s in the

  • story that began the talk. So this brings us back to again the same--the same example.

  • Now what's interesting about this is that there are--if on a 42-key keyboard, there

  • are 42 times 41 times 40 so forth possible arrangements on a key--on a tray bed with

  • 2,450, there are 2, 450 times so forth and so on. There is effectively infinite number

  • of arrangements--possible arrangements of these characters. And so, we see is that in

  • after this--after the predictive turn in the 1950s, we see multiple people applying this

  • to their own tray beds centering around certain basic--basically shared principles and yet

  • each of them completely individualized and completely idiosyncratic. There are no two

  • predictive tray beds that are--that are alike. And let me give you just a few examples of

  • these. There's two tray beds that I'd like to talk about. One is a Chinese Typewriter

  • used at the Paris--the Unesco Office in Paris. Another one is use in the United Nations Office

  • in Geneva. These are two separate Chinese type--typewriters and typists working in very

  • different contexts and I--and I'll walk you through this as well. On the left one here--and

  • this is a 1930s just to give a comparison against the pre-predictive tray bed. In the

  • middle here, in the Unesco Machine we see this character in yellow Mao, this is the

  • surname of Mao Zedong. And if we look to the--below it, we--the two characters below it are Zedong,

  • so that he could type or she could type Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong quickly and

  • easily. Emanating off to the right of it are--is the character--are the characters Ju and Shi,

  • Jushi, Mao Jushi which is Chairman Mao. And so kind of the Mao is again constellated in

  • such a way that it can be kind of concatenated with a bunch of different characters that

  • this typist needed. In the right example, in the Geneva Machine, we see the exact same

  • idea but in essence constellated differently. We see again the character Mao in yellow,

  • and now Mao Zedong doesn't go up--down as in this example but all off to the left. And

  • Mao Jushi, Chairman Mao doesn't go off to the right but goes down. So in essence we

  • see these typists converging around certain principles but each one very idiosyncratically

  • organized. To make this a bit clearer for those, you know, for those who don't read

  • Chinese we have the example of punctuation. Predictive text was even applied to punctuation

  • in then actually in numerals. But anyway, in the 1930s the question mark, exclamation

  • mark, period, comma, were put where they kind of rationally belong all together in one place

  • and after the '50s a set of typists began to say, well that doesn't make much sense.

  • We know that question marks always come after a question particle because that's how you

  • express--that's one of the ways you express the interrogative in Chinese is by the addition

  • of particles. We know that the particle--that the characters ma, ba and na those are in

  • red there are always followed by the question marks so that's constellated around the question

  • mark on the machine. We see in the United Nations machine by comparison the exact same

  • idea but again a different configuration of these other particles. Now why are they differently

  • configured? And this is the really fascinating thing that I'm sort of working with various

  • set of data visualization specialist and others to try and think about, it could be all sorts

  • of things left-handedness, right-handedness this is sort of mnemonic devices that one

  • person prefers to remember the location or another. All sorts of factors could go in

  • to why this idiosyncrasy prevails but the really--but kind of anchoring any of these

  • idiosyncratic personalization are again these kind of cohering strategies that we often

  • see from one example to the other. This is a basic heat map which is--basically visualizes

  • the--is a calculation of adjacency it's the bright red or the dark red patches are those

  • that in which the character can be combined with maybe seven--six, seven, or eight of

  • the characters in the surrounding area the kind of--the whit, the very, very, very light

  • white-red, the white can be combined with one and then the black here indicates that

  • the character cannot be combined with any of the characters in the Morse neighborhood

  • to form a real Chinese word. This is a heat map of a tray bed from the Republican period

  • 1911 to 1949 before the type of innovation I'm taking about. So you can see that there

  • is some almost accidental situations in which a character is flanked by other characters

  • that it can be combined with and then there's one part here that I'm happy to talk about

  • why there's--why there is a collection there. The important thing is that once we go to

  • 19--after 1949 this is what the tray bed looks like it heats up, it lights up because the

  • basic principle again is the maximization of adjacency of related characters. So to

  • put them side by side we can kind of get a sense of what all of these incremental innovations

  • in the interface of the machine translated into and this is how we explain an acceleration

  • of the speed of typing that could be that high as indicated in the People's Daily. Not

  • just this leap, it's not just this leap that is so interesting it's also again the variety

  • between different interfaces. These are--both the UNESCO and the UN machine both of them

  • predictively, a natural language arrangements, and how differently each of them behaves.

  • They have clusters in different places they--the kind of architecture of the arrangement is

  • very, very different and again in terms of interpreting why that's a very challenging

  • active--of working backwards from the arrangement by the 19--late 1980s and into the 1990s we

  • begin to see Chinese typewriting companies and Chinese typewriting instruction manuals,

  • the appendix of which used to carry grids like tables that showed you where all of the

  • characters on the tray bed are, you know, it's a very important thing for a manual to

  • teach you. By the 1980s and 1990s we begin to see tables like this that are empty because

  • they're basically saying to the user you decide, you decide where to put the characters. Now

  • there are some suggestions these characters here, well it's hard to point too, the characters

  • along the side are saying you should probably--you could probably put characters about Communism

  • here, you could probably put characters about higher-education here, about war here, about

  • science here, about and they're--but they're just suggestions ultimately it is left to

  • the typist to decide where all of these arrangements are taking place. So in essence what this

  • speaks to me is that machine--the manufacturers of these machines were in effect catching

  • up with something that was a user lead innovation. So to close I just want to ask a few sort

  • of set of open questions, the first set of questions is kind of what about the computer?

  • You'll notice that electrical automation, computing, word processing is noticeably absent

  • from this talk it's entirely about mechanical typewriting environment and if you go into

  • the discussions of various innovation by BAIDU, or by SOGO, or by various input methods that

  • use predictive or algorithmic probabilistic determinations for input. The assumption,

  • the prevailing assumption is that this was kind of the--thanks to the computer which

  • like the Data ex Machina comes in and saves Chinese from itself in essence, and what you

  • see actually when you look into the history of early Chinese computing in the '60s and

  • '70s is by in large the virtualization or digitization of principles and applications

  • that had been developed in the mechanical Chinese typewriting environment. That is to

  • say that at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and various others working in the late '60s

  • and '70s, they are very aware of what's going on in the mechanical Chinese typewriting environment

  • and they're trying to basically enhance or build upon that and it's not a question of

  • this innovation coming in exclusively from the outside and changing the game as it were.

  • So the larger question I guess is that--and I give this example here in BAIDU, excuse

  • me, the BAIDU example all input systems not just search engines but all input systems

  • for Chinese are all make use of predictive text, all of them now, and so there is this

  • important question of where does this come from in the history of Chinese computing and

  • Chinese internet. And quite obviously I'm arguing that there's not an exclusive genealogy

  • that dates back into the history I'm talking about but one that certainly combines the

  • history of Chinese typewriting and the history of computing more broadly. So if this is true,

  • the question is a sort of bigger question, is how did we miss the typing rebellion? If

  • there was this--no Chinese historians in the group so--okay, there's this massive civil

  • war in China could the Typing Rebellion. Anyway, there is a question of that if this innovation

  • is taking place in the 20th century then how do we keep missing it? How do we--why do we,

  • in large part, continue to ignore the history of information technology in China before

  • maybe five, ten years ago and imagine it as being--in essence more of proof of the anti-modernity

  • of Chinese than anything we would ever look into to be inspired in our own innovation

  • and what I would like to suggest is that, not only for my own purposes, but also maybe

  • even for designers among you who are looking for massive repository of experimentation

  • and innovation, which may have not seen the light of day but may itself provide inspiration

  • and blueprints for things moving ahead. I'd like to suggest that the Chinese typewriter

  • as a problem, historically has operated in very similar type of inspiration as the original

  • billboard ad back in the day that was designed to kind of challenge and inspire the most

  • innovative, eccentric kind of thinkers in the world and the Chinese typewriter in it's

  • own way, throughout the course of the 20th century, became a magnet for not only innovators

  • in China but from all across the world and same thing with Chinese computing and now

  • into later technologies. And so it is actually an immense repository of inspiration and principles

  • that I think we could all profit from looking more deeply into. Thank you very much. I'm

  • happy to take questions. Why don't we start on the right and then go to the middle.

  • >> So we speak a little bit about how these typewriters actually work in terms like how

  • big they are, how do they get set-up because first thing's one of the things about this

  • is it makes your typewriter a very personal device or you have to arrange it to your--to

  • your additive [INDISTINCT] sit down at any keyword and you expect [INDISTINCT]

  • >> MULLANEY: Right. >> And that seems like a very different shift

  • [INDISTINCT] >> MULLANEY: Right, absolutely. Could everyone

  • hear the question? Okay. So the machine was roughly--let's--I'll just use my hands, is

  • roughly about this wide--the tray bed itself is about this wide and this deep, okay, and

  • then machine itself kind of--may juts out from the back maybe about this far and it

  • comes off--from top to bottom it would be about yay tall very, very heavy. So the--the

  • dimensions of it are pretty comparable with many desktop systems we see but the weight

  • of it is significantly higher but what you're talking about here, this kind of built in--this

  • built in, almost personal relationship between the operator and the typist--and the machine

  • is absolutely true. So even before what I'm describing as a predictive--kind of a predictive

  • turn in the interface, you would have to personalize your machine. Not only in terms of the time

  • period and whether or not you're work in a bank or a law firm as I suggested but things

  • like maybe your co-worker or your boss has a surname whose character--the character if

  • the person surname is within it of itself, very infrequent. It doesn't show up in newspapers

  • very much but for you, it shows up everyday, every page. And so, you would have to make

  • sure that your machine has that name. And so, if we imagine a scenario in which, you

  • know, someone was sick that day and couldn't come in and someone else had to sit down at

  • the machine. There would be a--before 1949, there would be kind of basic road map. The

  • person would know that this is organized according to radical stroke but beyond that basic road

  • map they might not know where to go. They might not know how the other person personalized

  • it. So, it is a very different interface just as a build--from the GETCO than type writing

  • in practically any other language that we--that we--that we see. And then after 1949 this

  • becomes even more so. You would not be able to use really effectively a typewriter that

  • someone else had rearranged according to their own natural language arrangements. The tray

  • bed is almost an embodiment of their consciousness. If you think about it, it's how I remember

  • where everything is, how my body works, how I prefer this to be. And then you come and

  • try to use it. It's like trying to figure out someone else's file folder structure on

  • their laptop. It's very, very personal. The gentleman in the--in the sweater and then

  • to the gentleman with the glasses, yes? >> So you mainly talk about how people with

  • their group--language, natural language [INDISTINCT] is there any evidence you're reading [INDISTINCT]

  • >> MULLANEY: I know, yeah. >> That, you know, [INDISTINCT]

  • >> MULLANEY: That's a great question. Yes? >> Do we have to repeat the question for the

  • remote the audience? >> MULLANEY: Oh, for the remote audience.

  • Oh, I'm sorry. The question is--the question is, so the talk mainly focused on how innocent

  • people with their understanding of and their use of natural language--their own use of

  • the language reorganized the interface of the machine. Is there any evidence to suggest

  • that the kind of reorganization of the interface machines cycled back and really transformed

  • language? The quick answer is, I suspect so. The longer answer is I suspect so but it is

  • going to take massive corpus analysis to really decide whether or not that that's happening.

  • We'd have to--we'd have to do stuff that really has never been done with the analysis of Chinese

  • language material high throop. I mean it really depends upon Chinese OCR becoming better because

  • we would need top do immense corpus analysis to see whether or not there are changes overtime.

  • The one thing that maybe countervails against it--against the possibility, so that is to

  • say that I suspected it's true but one thing that maybe suggested is not--is that the Chinese

  • Typewriter was mainly a re-inscription device, a re-productive advice. It was--you would

  • start out with a manuscript or something and you would copy it, you would produce a type--a

  • type script version of it. What you don't see in the context of Chinese Typewriting

  • as opposed to practically every other typewriting context, is then idea of the author sitting

  • down at a machine and producing a manuscript, like there's no such thing as Lin--the writer

  • Lin Yu Tang in China sitting down in his Chinese typewriter the way that Allen Ginsberg might

  • sit down. And this comes back to the common usage system that not all of the characters

  • are there. And it is the job of the poet and the job of the writer to in fact to delve

  • into the infrequent and the beautiful. And so, maybe not but I think that that's one--that's

  • one area that I'm trying to team up with distant reading and corpus linguistic specialist to

  • see if it's possible to ask that, to ask that question about linguistic change. The gentleman

  • in the glasses and then the gentleman in the black leather.

  • >> So, there was also this [INDISTINCT] the simplified Chinese. Do you think to wish to

  • simplify typing and wish to simplify writing would be correlated--basically correlate the

  • [INDISTINCT] >> MULLANEY: Sure. The question is, you know,

  • that the relationship between simplification campaigns and then this kind of taxonomic

  • reform of the--of the tray bed are there any relationships? Because they are happening

  • at the same time. There are happening in the early 1950's under the--in during Maoism they

  • take--they take place in the '50s. There was an earlier aborted effort to simplify characters

  • under the Republican regime but the places where they seem to be related is that the

  • typewriter became--and the tray bed in particular became a highly politicized space or domain

  • if we think about because for example, during the simplification campaigns, there were no--there

  • were notifications sent to typewriting manufacturers saying that you need to replace these traditional

  • characters with simplified characters now. Which from their perspective is a monetary--you

  • know, is a financial burden--there's a financial burden on people at the local level to--that's

  • theoretically half to replace the character with another one that has been identified

  • as the simplified version. And, so people were reticent to that because it just--it

  • just kind of cost money and was a--was a--was pain. And so, it became one of the places

  • that the--that the--that the communist government was very eager along with printing presses,

  • a very eager to promote simplification because these were obviously the places that produced

  • texts. So, you want to go to the--if you can change the characters on a typewriter and

  • change a character on a type--a printing press then you therefore transform every piece of

  • every page that gets produced thereafter. So, in terms of them interacting or relating

  • to each other causally I don't see that all that much but they are connected historically.

  • Yes, sir? And then the gentleman. >> So, underlying the couple of assumption

  • that [INDISTINCT] I grew up in this country and there wasn't a lot reading the newspaper.

  • So, the language became very I would say [INDISTINCT] so, I wonder if there's any study on how much

  • it affected the language. Because it proves to make it more [INDISTINCT]

  • >> MULLANEY: Right. The question-if I can--if I can synthesize it, let me know if I get

  • it right. Is--I'd say it is the question, is there--is there a relationship between

  • the kind of templetization--I like that word, of language in Mao--in Maoist China which

  • relates to kind of--the kind of Newspeak phenomenon that happened in many communist context and

  • this--that because the language was in essence more predictable, that it was more amenable

  • to a predictive text arrangement. And the answer is--I mean I think yes. You know, in

  • a longer paper, in a longer project that's actually an entire part of the argument is

  • that the emergence of a un--of a--of a--of a political rhetoric, of unprecedented standardization

  • during Mao--the Maoist period of unprecedented kind of routedness was itself largely facilitated

  • the creation of a tray bed in which it would be very useful to create a natural language

  • arrangement because, you know, that you're going to be saying American imperialist--the

  • American imperialist over and over again. What's facilitating about it I think is that,

  • normally the idea of Newspeak this kind of 1984 image of the communist rhetoric is typically

  • understood as an inhibition as an inhibiting factor to innovation. It inhibits thought

  • because you can--it kind of, you know, that's a--it's double plus good kind of idea of language.

  • And it seems that perhaps there is--there's a lot of credence to that argument. But in

  • this case, the--we see the exact opposite. That for the--for at least in this context

  • Newspeak is inspiring or part of a history of radical techno-linguistic innovation in

  • which there is a--there is a kind of encouraging or inspiring momentum for the typist to make

  • the tray bed as idiosyncratic and personally optimized as possible. So, that they can more

  • and more efficiently produce texts that are more and more route if you see what I mean.

  • So, there's a--there's--do you see what I mean? There's actually--there's actually a

  • relationship between innovation and Newspeak that we--that we rarely see another context

  • but that is highly relevant--highly relevant here I think. Yes? In the back and then--in

  • a black sweatshirt. >> Okay. You mentioned...

  • >> MULLANEY: Oh, I'm sorry. >> You mentioned various factors [INDISTINCT]

  • how about spoken dialect, is that [INDISTINCT] >> MULLANEY: The question pertains to spoken

  • dialect and if I can--if I can broaden it out because it is a really interesting questions

  • about--I mean really the question of dialect and Chinese language information technology

  • as a whole is a very, very political question throughout really the 20th century. For the

  • most part, there has been a kind of antagonistic relationship between Chinese information technology

  • and dialect. In the sense that people had been political leaders manufactures and others

  • had been very resistant to the idea of developing for example, Cantonese input or Shanghainese

  • input or Taiwanese input or to--even before that--before we think of input and whatnot.

  • The question of whether or not different dialects in Chinese should be outfitted with their

  • own written languages and whether or not people should be able to publish for example a book

  • in Cantonese where the characters are actually--there are many Cantonese characters which do not

  • exist in Mandarin Chinese should people be allowed to publish in that way which is also

  • a kind of information technology question and the answer has consistently been, no because

  • if we--if we pair up the massive diversity of dialect diversity in China with written

  • form we will in some sense institutionalize these cleavages and that could actually damage

  • the territorial integrity of the country. That's why most regimes in the 20th century

  • in China had been very, very--and another elite, political elites have been very focused

  • on the promotion of a single standard. And so for example with pinion with Chinese pinion

  • inputs that is actually a--not only an information technology tool but a pedagogical tool that

  • people know that if they're going to use a computer in China they have to use pinion

  • input and pinion input is route is connected directly to the Chinese standard. And so the

  • very active learning how to use a computer is in some way shaper form becoming oriented

  • towards the standard. And so they've been very resistant to develop alternate techniques

  • for that. And let me just jump to you I'm very sorry.

  • >> Yes. I'm trying to kind of like you to get the kind of answer I really [INDISTINCT]

  • did you try to--kind of figure out how they actually basically try to reverse the communication

  • process applicable to this and how the actual typist make this happen? [INDISTINCT]

  • >> MULLANEY: Right. >> But how did they do it with like the numbers

  • they're very equipped [INDISTINCT] very large numbers.

  • >> MULLANEY: Right. >> And how do they arrive at that, I mean

  • [INDISTINCT] I mean whenever we [INDISTINCT] too far things, we just Google near each other

  • [INDISTINCT] >> MULLANEY: Yeah. So the question in this--the

  • basic question is how did these re-engineers of their machine do it, how did they go about

  • the process of producing these natural language arrangements, tray beds that's actually why

  • or how I came to be here today was I gave a talk at Stanford which is my home institution

  • and it was within STS and STS contacts was attended very luckily for me by Scott Clemer

  • from HCI at Stanford who then invited me to give a talk there and I was talking with Scott

  • and I said I need to, I need to talk to someone who works on optimization because I need to

  • know how someone right now would think about the optimization of such a hyper-complex system

  • not because I want to build a Chinese typewriter but because I want to hear someone talk about

  • the process of optimization so that I can--so that it can excite my imagination and excite

  • my sort of heuristic complex so that I can go back and have more intelligent--search

  • more intelligently for exactly the answer that you're talking about. It is entirely

  • a question there's two pathways to answering the question, I don't have an answer yet that's

  • going to be--that's the kind of reason that I actually first emailed I'm sorry--to complete

  • the story, then Scott said you need to talk to Xu Man Jai and then he put us in contact

  • we had a really wonderful conversation and then that manifested itself in today but I

  • have to admit with the tools of my disposal I'm at a loss because there I can try to reverse

  • engineer from the tray beds that I have and that's where I really need to pair up with

  • someone who thinks about those problems everyday and then the other thing that I can line up

  • is ethnographic or oral-historical interviews with typists. But even that is a very challenging

  • thing, tell me back in 1970 how you decided to move character one to space x and character--that's--you

  • know that's embodied memory. They--that's not something that they're going to written

  • down somewhere so even that is a incredibly challenging process but that's I think an

  • incredible pay off not just for me as an historian but for designers who are looking for inspiration

  • in my opinion. The gentleman on sorry--well actually I'm sorry maybe if I can keep the

  • order and then resume in. Yes. >> [INDISTINCT] it seemed like, you mentioned

  • [INDISTINCT] and character may have to be [INDISTINCT]

  • >> MULLANEY: Right. >> To be here you have to lose every character.

  • >> MULLANEY: Yes. >> You have to actually hit the [INDISTINCT]

  • >> MULLANEY: Right. >> You have to put that actually [INDISTINCT]

  • like [INDISTINCT] >> MULLANEY: No. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So

  • the question pertains to before 1949, before the natural language rearrangements here.

  • Even--how did the process of optimization of tray beds in the Republican period take

  • place and the process that you just describe is exactly what would've been required there

  • is no, I've seen no tray beds where some characters just strangely out of place and--but everything

  • is always in place so if you think about it the closest analogue we have is the kind of

  • that gain with the missing plastic with a plastic pieces with one piece missing and

  • you've got to move it around, you move one thing everything must move, everything must

  • move to fill in the space and so yes so even so that's an important dimension here is that

  • even before the '50s there is some--there is a--there are dimensions or characteristics

  • that are built into the tray bed itself and into this particular techno-linguistic apparatus

  • that provided a context with a more radical transformation we see in the '50s. But every

  • tray bed I've ever seen exhibits no laziness in terms of some weird character out in the

  • middle of nowhere so yeah. Yes? >> Tom, as historian with a many to sustain

  • such a political context to major changes to the institution but much of the results

  • could be looked at or design purely problem of language or efficiency point of view just--or

  • even in purpose we can optimize the arrangements so you had pasted on [INDISTINCT] so I wonder

  • with your [INDISTINCT] is to wonder how important these political, social background.

  • >> MULLANEY: Right. That's--I feel like--I feel like I owe you something because I--you

  • gave me a chance to kind of mention one slide that I skipped which was very important which

  • was the fact that--let's see if I can find it very quickly--that even in the Republican

  • period there was one small part, remember the--remember the--remember in the heat map

  • there's a one little bright red part there was a cluster there was one tiny, tiny region

  • of the tray bed roughly two cells wide by maybe 10 cells tall so out of 2500 roughly,

  • it's a very small a region which were arranged according to natural language arrangements

  • and these were province names. So the example up here has a let's look at the character

  • Jhang that's highlighted in yellow which means river Jhang can be combined with diagonally

  • Sou create a province name Jhang Sou. It can be combined with the character to it's left

  • Ju for Ju Jhang which is another province and then it can be combined through this kind

  • of neat kind of knight like a chess kind of thing of Halong Jhang from the bottom to the

  • top to the right. This was the one, there's few important things about this. One is that

  • we know both here and in very esoteric discussions by some language reformers that people were

  • thinking about this in the '30s, they were thinking about this. They were kind of--it

  • was in the general swirl of possibility as a known thing and at the same time we also

  • know that in the '20s and the '30s was a time of hyper innovative, hyper iconoclastic language

  • reform. This was the time when people were saying let's get rid of all the characters

  • and replace it with French. Let's simplify all the characters let's replace it with a

  • symbolic notation system. Very, very crazy sort of ideas and yet even with this context

  • the step towards the kind of radical departure towards this new arrangement was never, never

  • tried to my knowledge and I've seen a lot of these machines now more than I cared to

  • admit and so there seems to be--it seems to be that if this is purely a question of efficiency

  • and optimization that we would have seen something far earlier because people would've known

  • it [INDISTINCT] that it was just something was keeping the dams, the water behind the

  • dam and that it really took the--it really took the '50s and it really took Maoism and

  • it really took this idea of the kind of mass overturning knowledge systems to lay dynamite

  • to that dam and just say okay everybody, do whatever you want to the tray bed, do whatever

  • you want however you see fit and then from that moment on it takes place because in the

  • people's daily it shows up in three different places, it shows up in dozens of other places

  • and not everyone does it but suddenly it starts to spread out until by but again that slide

  • from the 1980s shows that even typewriter manufacturers were like okay you guys are

  • better at this than we are, you have better ways of optimizing your machines than we could

  • ever come up with so the semiotic interface is yours basically. So I do think that there

  • is, I thought about that for a long time and ultimately I came to the conclusion that the

  • last piece of the puzzle on this is counter intuitively Maoism.

  • >> Unfortunately we reached the end of the--this--[INDISTINCT] talk. Let's thank again for Tom. Thank you.

  • For those of you who want to--thank you very much.

>> up to recently at Google Research recently joined Google Android. As a native Chinese,

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シリコンバレーの中国製タイプライター (A Chinese Typewriter in Silicon Valley)

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    蓝天 に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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