Curate: The Techne Whim: Lin Yutang and the Invention of the Chinese Typewriter
For this week, I found a very intriguing article dealing with invention and technology.
In William's article "Lin Yutang and the Invention of the Chinese Typewriter," we see Yutang introducing this typewriter to the Remington Typewriter Company in order to help China be able to navigate a growing technologically savvy world considering that most of the materials available in China were still handwritten. In order to evaluate Lin's invention, William's uses Heidigger's definition of techne, which he describes as him returning "to the etymological roots of the word 'technology' in an effort to rescue forms of thinking and handicraft from the systemic metaphysics of modern technology—in short, to distinguish between what might be called the modern “techno” and the originary technê" (393). By using this idea, we start to move Asian techne outside of the Western invention tradition. In his original writings, Lin warns against the mechanized version of the mind that the Western tradition seems to foster. It then seems that Lin's invention of the typewriter goes against everything he wrote about warning against mechanization in invention. However, his work actually provides a sense for both: enabling writers to get work done more effectively using a type writer while still getting rid of the mechanized mindset of the Western tradition. He did this by understanding that "the task was not simply to mechanize China’s orthography, but rather to discover some hidden, inner systematic logic to the Chinese characters that was already there, a kind of technê-essence that could then be transferred onto a mechanical grid" (398). What this accomplishes is allowing the art form of the Chinese language and writing to still stay while allowing works to be mass produced. What is unfortunate is that Lin's model could not be mass produced at the time, due to cultural conflicts and the sheer cost of the typewriter.
This article heavily applies to invention in that in changing technology changes our entire writing process. If we think to invention, if we have moved from a place where everything is handwritten, meaning that the minute it goes on paper it becomes a final product, this changes our invention strategies. With computer and editing softwares, we are given the chance to edit in the moment and construct ideas. Without having that software, all of our ideas have to be formulated when we start writing a final product.
Here's the link to the article!
http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=cafc4358-b16b-400b-84eb-268bee0943f1%40sessionmgr115&vid=6&hid=101
