Writing itself is a technology, an evolving technology.
New technologies lower the barriers and create more readers and writers.
New communication technologies always create anxiety. They disrupt social, cultural, political and linguistic norms.
This article is a very lean summary of the classes we had so far. It is shaped by the questions asked for this take-home mid-term and does not summarize everything I learnt, but probably shows what comes to my mind at first, when thinking about it. Naturally, I also added some of my personal thoughts on the subject matter.
When I first heard that writing is a technology, I was slightly irritated. Why should writing be a technology, if it does not require electricity or at least a plan, created by an engineer? If you ask Google for the definitions of “technology” 1) , it tells you that is has some technical-like synonyms and both Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster decided to explain the term with technical means which I found a little weak, since they explained the term by itself.
In ancient times, writing was even a profession, since very few people were able to do so, but it became a medium to record facts, stories and history instead of using word-of-mouth. The scripture was not always the same. You might argue whether wall paintings of the Stone Age are scripture or not, but the Egyptian hieroglyphics were definitely supposed to mean something significant. The two reeds which can be seen on Figure 1 mean discovery and all the temples’ walls are full of hieroglyphics which tell stories from the past or even the future.
Figure 1: Hieroglyphics at Horus Temple in Egypt 2)
Considering that not everyone is able to read or even to write, because you have to learn it over the years, writing can be seen as a technology. It is something that you do not do intentionally like breathing - you have to learn every step on your own. I started to try reading when I was 5 years old and during elementary school both reading and writing became more and more easier for me. But even after years of writing essays, exams, letters or short stories, the writing is still evolving. That does not necessarily mean that it gets better, but it is changing. Since I am reading more online magazines than printed newspapers, I am not used to concentrate very long on an article. I usually read the teaser and when I am interested I read the whole piece. Online articles are usually shorter than newspaper articles, therefore they don’t go that deep in the subject. I also tend to use Ctrl+F to look for an interesting passage in the article, if I am looking for something in particular. Luckily, I also read books, which still let’s me practice concentrating for a long time, but in comparison to the times without internet, I have to force myself sometimes to stay patient and enjoy a book instead of skip-reading to the “interesting” part of the book. This behavior has also influence of the way I am writing. When I started writing, it was all about writing long stories which have a linear development. No way you would tell the ending of your story, your diary entry, a letter or your summary at the beginning of the article. Writing for online publications is different – the teaser and the title have to tell the mist important information and then let the reader decide whether he wants to proceed or not. The same goes for e-mails. Instead of knowing that the recipient will read your e-mail anyway and offering him a nice story, you rather put the relevant information in the subject line to make sure that the recipient reads that e-mail and answers you. If you don’t enter a subject line or the e-mail seems like some random chitchat, you might not even get an answer to that.
It’s not only that the internet shaped our way of writing and reading, it also offered more people the possibility to publish their stories in an easy way. Content management systems (CMS) like Wordpress makes it very easy for anyone with a little computer experience to run an own website, upload pictures, videos and publish their own articles. If this, however, makes other internet users read it, is a different kettle of fish. Most of the blog probably have no readers at all, but there are some blogs which really grew over the time and surpassed common newspapers in terms of relevance, especially when they were focused on a special field. As the numbers of writers is rising, I am not sure about the readers. People do spend more time with consuming media, but I think that uneducated people do not benefit from the rising variety of medias. Especially less developed countries do not have internet connections for every city, illiteracy is still a big issue and even if they could read they would rather spend the money for food than for a newspaper. One technology which did help creating more readers was the printing press, developed by Johanes Gutenberg in the 1430s. Gutenberg made the first copies of the bible, called the Gutenberg bible, printed in colors. There are 48 copies of it existing today, but only 21 of them are complete. Before the press was invented, priests had to made handwritten copies of the bible to spread the word. It took a long time and could become frustrating if there was one single mistake on a page, because they had to start over again. Since it was so boring to copy page to page, some pages had beautiful paintings on it for the first letter of a page or book.
New technologies are rarely warmly welcomed. People are usually afraid of everything that’s new because they might have to move out of their comfort zone to try it out. It is always easier to stick to old behaviors than experiencing something new. As new technologies are often seen as useless at the beginning, new communication technologies were often very revolutionary. If you think back to the times of the kings, it was not common to criticize the monarch after all. As the newspapers came up, some were certainly not amused that somebody dared to write about them anything but good. Freedom of speech has not been established yet, therefore some publishers faced the death by hanging. Freedom of speech is still an issue in a lot of countries nowadays. Censorship of the internet is normal in China and the Arab Spring showed prominently how the population was organizing the protests through Twitter until the site has been blocked. The internet changed also our language. You often hear people say “lol” instead of actually laughing out loud. The written language has also been influenced by the internet. We are using acronyms and emoticons in e-mails or text messages. Emoticons are certainly not real written text, but they become part of it to emphasize the tone of the conversation. Apart from the internet, also the telegraph changed the communications a lot. A messenger on his horse was no longer needed, because the telegraph was so much faster. At first, the need for the telegraph was not seen, but after a while, the advantages become obvious. The telephone was also a technology, which slowly became popular in the population. At the beginning, there was just one telephone in small villages to call the doctor, but has the technology evolved and became more affordable, every household could get a landline. I also remember when fixed phones in cars became available (C-Netz = “c-net” in Germany, some other band than GSM) and everybody who did not want to pay hundreds of Deutsche Mark for it was laughing about it. Now, when everybody has a mobile phone, it is no questions that we are also talking on the phone while driving a car (assisted by a hands-free kit of course).
I could go on until forever, because there will be no end to the change of our communication styles which are always influenced by the upcoming technologies.
1) http://www.google.com/search?q=definition+technology&hl=en
2) Private photo taken by the author in 2010
