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

欧美语言技术对中国信息基础设施影响史

• 批准号: 1152578
• 负责人: Thomas Mullaney
• 金额: $ 19.79万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-09-01 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1152578&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: History; Impact; Euro; American; Linguistic

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.

简介在十九世纪欧洲帝国主义的鼎盛时期，中国陷入了全球信息技术的新发展，而这并非是中国自己设计的。它以一套语言技术和符号系统（例如电报及其附带的编码系统）为基础，而这些技术和符号系统依赖于汉语所不具备的东西，即字母文字。接下来是一个多世纪的对汉字技术限制和潜力的批判性实验。围绕中国问题出现了一种涉及大量跨国文字的创新文化，并最终导致了一种新的基于汉字的信息基础设施的发展，该基础设施将管理巨大的基于汉字的信息环境，包括索引、列表、目录、字典、盲文、电报码、速记码、排字机、打字机、计算机、短信等。该项目以十多个国家的 55 个档案馆、特别收藏、博物馆、私人收藏和遗址中进行的档案和口述历史工作为基础，描绘了这种新颖的中文信息基础设施的全球历史，利用其最重要和最具说明性的领域——中文打字机，作为理解这一更广泛历史的镜头。 学术价值 该项目与科学技术史之外的至少十个不同领域的学术直接对话。作为对现代东亚历史未经检验的方面的研究，该项目引起了中国、日本和韩国历史专家的极大兴趣。作为一个涉及 IBM、兰德公司、Mergenthaler、Olivetti 和 Wang Laboratories（等等）等众多大公司的历史，该项目建立在商业史、经济学和政治学方面的学术基础上。该项目与汉语本身的历史密切相关，也借鉴和贡献了语言学和文化研究。与此同时，中国打字机女孩引人入胜且未经审视的历史可能会引起中国国内外女性研究研究人员的兴趣。潜在的更广泛影响 除了学术界之外，该项目还将引起专业界和公共界广大受众的极大兴趣。它将为设计、人机交互、自然语言处理和计算机科学其他分支领域的实践者和理论家提供轻松进入仍知之甚少的中国信息技术世界的机会。在公共媒体中，该项目也将促进对中国信息技术的更深入、实证的理解；鉴于中国已成为全球 IT 强国，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、公开讲座和专着。该项目还将继续为与技术史有关的新本科生和研究生课程的开发提供信息，特别是在非西方背景下。