From Oracle Bones to Computers. Baotong Gu
above case, depends on the observer’s experience with the human species, which is limited to his own race, and makes sense only in the context of his own race. In a similar way, what a writing technology is—what it means, how it should be used, and how it should be further developed—depends, to a large extent, on how people (the participants of technology development) perceive and define this technology.
Therefore, it is the main goal of this book to interpret such perceptions and their implications on the development of technologies, particularly writing technologies. However, the purpose of this book is multifold: to define technology, technology development, and technology transfer; to present a coherent and comprehensive picture of the emergence of various writing technologies throughout the history of China, including, for example, oracle inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, pen, ink, early forms of paper (such as bamboo, wood, and silk), paper of the modern form, block and movable type printing, the Chinese typewriter, and the computer; to explore the impact of these writing technologies on the respective historical periods with special regard to writing and communication behavior; and, most importantly, to deconstruct the social, political, and cultural contexts and their shaping influence on writing technology developments.
China: An Intriguing Case
Several factors make China an intriguing case for the study of writing technology development: a long history of civilization (over five thousand years), a source of some of the most important inventions of writing technologies (such as pen, ink, paper, and printing), a confusing pattern of development (with some periods flourishing with milestone emergences and others completely void of development), a combination of both native developments and foreign transfers (thus rendering itself an appropriate case study of technology transfer), and an intriguing, if not mysterious, writing system.
The first intriguing factor, China’s long civilization of over five thousand years, provides a rich site for any study, not the least of which is writing technology development. The history of the written Chinese itself can be traced as far back as the Dawenkou culture between the twenty-eighth century BCE and the twenty-third century BCE (Peng et al., 1989, p. 432). Over four or five thousand years of evolution, the Chinese civilization underwent a series of differing cultures during different historical periods and dynasties. This myriad of cultures adds an intriguing complexity to the context of writing technology development. In addition, a mature civilization as the site of study yields validity to our investigation, which targets culture as the scene of development.
A second intriguing factor lies in the fact that the Chinese civilization has been host to several of the most important inventions in writing technologies, such as pen, paper, ink, and printing. As early as the sixteenth century BCE, in the Shang Dynasty, when there was hardly any writing, not to mention writing technology, in other parts of the world, the Chinese were already using turtle shells and other animal bones for oracle inscriptions (Xia et al., 1979, p. 1673). This was arguably the earliest form of writing technology in the history of human civilization.
Another notable era of writing technology development is the subsequent period of the Zhou Dynasty (from the eleventh to the third century BCE). This so-called classical period of China saw the use of bamboo pens, soot ink, and bamboo and wood slips as primitive forms of paper (Carter, 1955, p. 94). Then came the invention of the writing brush, made of hair, in the third century BCE. This invention, according to Thomas Carter, “worked a transformation in writing materials, [which was] indicated by two changes in the language,” one being that “the word for chapter used after this time means ‘roll’” and the other being that “the word for writing materials becomes ‘bamboo and silk’ instead of ‘bamboo and wood’” (1955, p. 94).
China’s pioneering role in the invention of writing technology was best evidenced by two major inventions in the later history of China: paper and printing. Paper, which was commonly believed to have been invented around 105 CE (a claim disputed by many scholars), liberated the Chinese from the heavy bamboo “papers.” Printing in China witnessed two landmark inventions: that of block printing and that of the movable type printing. Block printing was invented in the golden age of literary and artistic prosperity in the eighth century, which saw the birth of some of the greatest poets and artists in China’s history. Then in the eleventh century came the invention of movable type printing. These two inventions of printing quickly spread to European countries and revolutionized, to a large degree, the writing technologies of their respective historical periods.
Although China cannot claim credit for the modern forms of all these writing technologies, few civilizations parallel China in spearheading writing technology developments in earlier historical periods. This multiplicity of writing technology inventions yields rich options for meaningful studies of writing technology development.
A third intriguing factor about China is that the history of writing technology development exhibits a confusing pattern, with flourishing developments in some historical periods and total inertia in others. The modern period, which spans a term of several centuries, is surprisingly impoverished in writing technology inventions, when compared with the early part of Chinese history. The West, in the meantime, seems to have been taking big strides in advancing various writing technologies. In the second half of the nineteenth century, for example, driven by an ideology of systematic management, America invented and discovered the use of the typewriter, duplicating methods such as hand printing and press printing, and filing systems. These inventions furnished the necessary technological means for the then increasing demand for written communication “to provide consistency, exactness, and documentation” (Yates, 1989, p. 22). However, the culmination of the development of writing technologies in the West, so far, has to be the invention and use of the computer, which has come to pervade and revolutionize writing in almost all fields and disciplines. Conversely, with regard to this most recent, most revolutionizing writing technology, China is so far behind the West in its development and implementation as to strain credulity. Yet there seems to exist no theory that could adequately explain how a country that had pioneered most of the way in advancing writing technologies in the history of human civilization could be so outpaced in its computer technology. Economic underdevelopment, though a seemingly feasible explanation for such a phenomenon, can only be an oversimplified justification. The answer has to lie in the more complicated cultural context that provides nourishing ground for the growth of new technologies. This idea alone adds interesting facets to our study.
A fourth factor that adds an intriguing dimension to our study is that the Chinese history of writing technology development encompasses both native developments and foreign transfers. China’s early computer technology, for example, was a wholesale transfer from the West. Yet, due to the unique nature of Chinese script, the Western design of the computer was unusable for producing Chinese characters. Fundamental modifications, therefore, were incorporated into the design to localize this technology in China, to render it useful in the Chinese context. This act of transfer and localization is an important aspect not to be overlooked in any study of writing technologies.
A fifth, and final, intriguing factor about the China case is the unique nature of the Chinese language/script, which is fundamentally different from Roman-based scripts such as English. While English is a phoneme-based alphabetical language, Chinese is an ideogram-based script language. (A more elaborate discussion of the nature of Chinese script is provided in the next section.) Translated into computer terms, each English letter takes up one byte of space in the ASCII system whereas each Chinese character occupies two. Therefore, in localizing the computer technology for the Chinese context, the specific changes in the design of the computer to accommodate such differences add yet another interesting facet to the study. (In fact, the complexities of this script with regard to both its nature and history defy easy characterization and warrant a separate section with a more elaborate and in-depth discussion. This, however, is certainly not meant to undermine the significance of the other factors that have contributed to the intriguing nature of the China case.)
The Mystery of the Chinese Script
Although the nature of Chinese script (and the mystery surrounding it), as discussed in the preceding section, is only one of the five factors that make China’s writing technology development an intriguing case, it deserves special treatment here for three distinct reasons. First, every writing technology in the history of China has