A History of the Impact of Euro-American Linguistic Technologies on Chinese Information Infrastructure

在19世纪欧洲帝国主义的鼎盛时期，中国赶上了全球信息技术的新发展，而这并非中国自己的设计。它建立在一套语言技术和符号系统（比如电报和随之而来的编码系统）的基础上，而这些技术和符号系统依赖于中国语言所不具备的东西——字母文字。随之而来的是一个多世纪以来对中国文字的技术限制和潜力的批判性实验。涉及到大量的、跨国的汉字，围绕着汉字问题出现了一种创新文化，并在一种新的基于汉字的信息基础设施的发展中达到高潮，这种基础设施将管理一个巨大的基于汉字的信息环境，包括索引、列表、目录、字典、盲文、电报代码、速记代码、排版机、打字机、计算机、短信等等。本项目以十多个国家的55个档案馆、特别收藏、博物馆、私人收藏和遗址的档案和口述历史工作为基础，绘制了这一新颖的中文信息基础设施的全球历史，并利用其最重要和最具说明意义的领域——中文打字机，作为了解这一更广泛历史的镜头。本项目与科技史以外至少十个不同领域的学者直接对话。作为对现代东亚历史的一个未被审视的方面的研究，这个项目对中国、日本和韩国的历史专家来说是至关重要的兴趣。作为一个涉及广泛的大公司的历史，包括IBM，兰德公司，Mergenthaler， Olivetti和Wang实验室（以及许多其他公司），该项目建立在商业史，经济学和政治学的学术基础上。这个项目与汉语本身的历史密切相关，也借鉴了语言学和文化研究。与此同时，中国打字机女孩迷人而未经研究的历史可能会引起国内外女性研究人员的兴趣。潜在的更广泛影响除学术界外，该项目将引起专业人士和公众的广泛兴趣。它将为设计、人机交互、自然语言处理和其他计算机科学分支的从业者和理论家提供进入中国信息技术世界的便捷入口。在公共媒体中，这个项目也将促进对中国信息技术更深入的、实证的理解；鉴于中国作为全球IT强国的崛起，获得这种理解变得比以往任何时候都更加重要。研究结果将通过多种媒体传播，包括单作者文章、合作文章、互动研究网站、公开讲座和专著。该项目还将继续为与技术史有关的新的本科和研究生课程的发展提供信息，特别是在非西方背景下。

IntroductionDuring the height of European imperialism in the nineteenth century, China was caught up in a new development in global information technology that was not of its own design. It was predicated on a set of linguistic technologies and symbolic systems (such as the telegraph and its attendant encoding systems) that depended upon something the Chinese language does not possess, an alphabetic script. What ensued was over a century of critical experimentation with the technological limits and potentials of Chinese script. Involving a vast, transnational cast of characters, a culture of innovation emerged around the Chinese Problem, and culminated in the development of a new character-based information infrastructure that would come to govern an immense Chinese character-based information environment, including indexes, lists, catalogs, dictionaries, Braille, telegraph codes, stenograph codes, typesetting machines, typewriters, computers, text messaging, and so forth. Based upon archival and oral historical work conducted in 55 archives, special collections, museums, private collections, and sites in more than ten countries, this project charts the global history of this novel Chinese information infrastructure, employing its most important and illustrative domain, the Chinese typewriter, as a lens through which to understand this broader history.Intellectual Merit This project is in direct conversation with scholarship in at least ten distinct fields beyond the history of science and technology. As a study of an unexamined aspect of modern East Asian history, this project is of critical interest to specialists in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean history. As a history involving a wide array of major corporations including IBM, the RAND Corporation, Mergenthaler, Olivetti, and Wang Laboratories (among many others), the project builds on scholarship in Business History, Economics, and Political Science. Closely connected to the history of the Chinese language itself, this project also draws upon and contributes to Linguistics and Cultural Studies. At the same time, the fascinating and unexamined history of the Chinese Typewriter Girl is likely to be of interest to researchers in Women's Studies, both inside and outside of China.Potential Broader Impacts Beyond academia, this project will be of substantial interest to a broad audience within professional and public circles. It will provide easy entry to practitioners and theorists in design, human-computer interaction, natural language processing, and other branches of computer science into the still poorly understood world of Chinese information technology. Within the public media, this project will foster a deeper, empirical understanding of Chinese information technology as well; given China's emergence as a global IT powerhouse, acquiring that understanding has become more critical than ever. Results of the research will be disseminated through a wide variety of media, including single-author articles, collaborative articles, an interactive research website, public lectures, and a book monograph. This project will also continue to inform the development of new undergraduate and graduate coursework pertaining to the history of technology, particularly in non-Western contexts.