WEBVTT - Interview Interlude Playlist, Part 3: Thomas S. Mullaney 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.119 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how stopworks 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:14.600 dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:17.119 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. We 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:19.959 are entering into Chinese New Year here, we're about to 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:23.560 enter the Year of the Dog, leaving behind the Year 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:26.480 of the Rooster. Yeah. So, you know, we we occasionally 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:29.560 touch on Chinese and Eastern topics throughout the year, but 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:31.800 this is always a good time to to really focus 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:33.879 on a couple of really good ones, and that's what 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:36.000 we have today. Yeah. So the Lunar New Year is 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:39.680 coming up on Friday, February, and this week we're doing 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:43.479 a couple of episodes related to Chinese culture and some 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:48.400 technological and scientific tie INDs. And so today's episode is 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:50.560 going to feature the bulk of it's going to be 0:00:50.560 --> 0:00:53.880 an interview we did with the author of a book 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:58.720 about the history of the Chinese typewriter. The full title 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:01.840 of the book is The Chinese Typewriter, a History and 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:05.720 it's published by M I T Press in Yeah, it's 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:07.759 available wherever you get your books, so you can get 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:11.160 it in digital form or print. Now, Robert, you you 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:14.120 picked this book out, Well, what appealed to you about it. Well, 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:16.960 I basically received a release about it about this book 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:20.880 from Thomas S. Mulaney, who's Associate professor of Chinese History 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:27.199 at Stanford University and curator of the international exhibition Radical Machines, China, 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:32.120 Chinese and the Information Age. And I really hadn't thought 0:01:32.160 --> 0:01:34.360 about this before, but I instantly thought, yeah, well, you 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:38.920 know the Chinese language, Mandarin, Chinese characters, how does that 0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:42.200 fit into the information age? How has that fit into 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:45.320 the information age? And so I said, well, let's let's 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:47.280 get back to that. Let's let's read this book and 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:49.000 uh and see what it has to offer. And it 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:52.880 was a really mind blowing read. Yeah, really interesting and 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:57.480 thinking about the ways that technology formed the substrates on 0:01:57.600 --> 0:02:01.400 which our languages evolved, and like, uh, this tension that's 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:06.160 constantly existing with information technology. Does the technology change the 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:09.120 way you use information? Or will the way you use 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:14.160 information shape the necessary features of technology? So we'll definitely 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:17.600 be discussing that with with Thomas Mullaney. But before we 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:20.639 get into that, I think we should just address the 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:24.760 issue behind the subject of the Chinese typewriter. Now, if 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:29.200 somebody isn't familiar with the written version of Chinese with 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:33.119 Chinese characters that it might not be immediately apparent to them. 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:38.480 Why the idea of a Chinese typewriter would be especially interesting. Yeah, 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:40.720 that's right, because you might just think, oh, well, we 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:44.560 have our letters, they have their letters wrong. Uh, Chinese 0:02:44.919 --> 0:02:47.720 does not have an alphabet. Now, certainly you can you 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:51.880 can write Chinese and say opinion, which is a version 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:55.320 of our Roman alphabet with with with accent marks added 0:02:55.320 --> 0:02:58.239 to let you know how the tones are to be pronounced. 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:00.679 But for the most part of any points that you 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:06.280 have this colonialism globalization of language that spreads around the world, 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:09.200 and it's based on that Roman alphabet. And then meanwhile 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:13.280 you have you have the Chinese with these these characters 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:16.359 that do not fit within that system. You can essentially 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:18.840 think of it as a system of pictograms, but they're 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:22.280 highly stylized pictures of what they represent. As many as 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:27.600 nine are compounds of a meaning element and a sound element. 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:29.720 So you can't just look at them and say, oh, 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:33.160 that's a river, that's a that's a robot, etcetera. They're 0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:36.760 they're far more complex than that. And uh, I've read 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:42.120 that you need to know somewhere between twelve hundred and 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:45.280 fifteen hundred characters to get the basic gist of a 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:49.000 Chinese newspaper. But you need to know between two thousand 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:52.360 and three thousand characters to really get a sufficient understanding 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:55.600 of the information. Meanwhile, a well educated Chinese speaker in 0:03:55.640 --> 0:04:00.160 today's world likely knows six thousand to eight thousand characters. 0:04:00.760 --> 0:04:02.800 And if you're wondering, well, where does that stand in 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:05.760 terms of all the characters, Well, you can look at 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:09.720 some of the major Chinese lexicons out there and they're 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:12.320 numbering in the tens of thousands. One figure I saw 0:04:12.400 --> 0:04:16.280 it was forty seven thousand Chinese characters. Now, that doesn't 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:20.720 necessarily mean that Chinese speakers would recognize forty seven thousand 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:23.919 characters when reading in the same way that you might read. 0:04:24.000 --> 0:04:28.080 You know a book of specialized terminology that has specialized 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:31.360 words in English, and you wouldn't necessarily know what those 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:34.280 words mean, right, Yeah. I think of the thickest dictionary 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:36.480 English dictionary you've ever picked up, and think of all 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:41.040 the words that that instantly don't resonate with you, and 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:43.400 you'll have some sense of what we're looking at here. 0:04:43.600 --> 0:04:46.480 But you do have this major difference in that in 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:49.480 a language like English, you can look at a word 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:52.320 and it's made out of letters that are familiar to you, 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:54.479 even if the word isn't familiar to you. So even 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:56.719 if you have no idea what our word means, you 0:04:56.760 --> 0:05:02.200 could almost instantly transcribe the word on a typewriter, keyboard 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:07.400 or whatever with Chinese characters, not necessarily the case. That's right, uh. 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:09.400 And another thing I want to touch on here is 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:12.800 that in China you have eight major dialect groups, and 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:15.400 we call these dialects, but as Milani points out, there 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:19.520 as mutually distinct as Portuguese and French in some cases. 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:22.640 But Mandarin is the official language of course, but still 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:26.360 all these different dialects, they depend upon the Chinese character system. 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:30.320 So so whether you're talking about Mandarin or Cantonese, Uh, 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:33.520 it's the same characters, but in practice Cantonese ads I 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:36.240 think about three thousand specialized characters. On top of that, 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:39.839 but think about the unifying influence of having characters like that. 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:43.159 So you can have a country that is, you know, 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:47.040 it's considered a people, the Chinese people of the Chinese country, 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:50.320 and they share a government and in a sense they 0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:53.799 share a language because they have these shared characters, even 0:05:53.839 --> 0:05:58.040 though they speak very very distinct oral languages. That's right. 0:05:58.120 --> 0:06:01.920 And then you enter this age where your internal system 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:06.280 of communication, written communication is at odds with the with 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:09.159 what's really becoming kind of a global standard. And it's 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:11.960 that tug of war that most of Mulaney's book focuses on. 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:14.359 All right, than, Robert, are you ready to go to 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:20.000 our interview with Thomas Laney. Let's do it, all right, Tom, 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:22.240 thank you for joining us on stuff to blow your mind. 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:24.560 It's it's a pleasure to be here. Well, we have 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:28.480 been reading your book, The Chinese Typewriter, A History. I 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:30.279 suppose the first question I have for you here today 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:33.839 is when you talk to people about your book, do 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:37.720 you encounter any of the key historic reactions to and 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:42.240 prejudices against just the idea the notion of a Chinese typewriter. 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:46.440 I would say all the time. It's what. One of 0:06:46.480 --> 0:06:51.120 the things that was at first surprising and then I 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:53.000 and then I had more time to think about it 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:57.120 over the course of working on the book, was that 0:06:57.200 --> 0:07:02.279 the consistency with which people would imagine in their minds 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:07.279 I what they assumed or expected a Chinese typewriter to 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:13.000 look like and um in essence, regardless of where I 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:15.560 was in the US or in Europe or An Asia, 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:19.640 including China. In many cases, the assumption kind of led 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:24.200 someone to the same expectation, which was a massive machine 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:31.360 with thousands of keys on this gigantic keyboard. And what's 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:35.080 surprising about this is that people arrive at this conclusion 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:42.880 without necessarily or almost never having seen such an image. 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:47.760 They just sort of created algorithmically in their mind. And 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:50.760 I think what I came to the kind of the 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:56.880 conclusion of is that the the what's going on in 0:07:56.880 --> 0:07:59.040 in our minds when we when we think about a 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:02.520 Chinese typewriter, it's a kind of it's like a mental algorithm. 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:05.600 It's a it's a it's a very short computer program 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:09.520 that runs in our mind and it goes something like this. Well, 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:12.880 I know that by definition, a typewriter is a machine 0:08:13.360 --> 0:08:17.320 with a keyboard and keys. I know that there is 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:20.400 one key per letter. I know that Chinese doesn't have 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:23.040 letters that has characters, and I know that there are 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:26.200 tens of thousands of characters where I've heard that. Ergo, 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:29.680 I've reached the conclusion about what in my mind's I 0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:33.000 a Chinese typewriter looks like um. And in the book, 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:37.240 what I tried to do is say, now there is 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:42.360 a total equation set up between keyboards, keys and typewriters. 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:46.560 There's no such thing as a typewriter without keys in 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:49.160 in the market, uh, and also in our imagination. But 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:51.560 if we go back early enough in the history of 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:55.440 the typewriter, including the Western typewriter, we very quickly get 0:08:55.480 --> 0:09:00.360 into this you know, sort of amazing and very verse, 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:06.520 kind of Jurassic ecology of typewriters, many different types of typewriters, 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:10.760 including typewriters that had no keys or keyboards themselves. And 0:09:10.840 --> 0:09:14.200 that in essence, the Chinese typewriter, which is a key 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:17.120 which is a typewriter that has no keyboard and no keys, 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:23.360 is a descendant of a sort of early early species 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:26.080 of typewriter that in the West died out, the typewriter 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:29.840 with no keyboard, but in China, um, you know, lived 0:09:29.880 --> 0:09:34.480 on and continued. It's it's it's it's evolution. Um. And 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:36.760 so now, when when the two meet again in the 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:44.640 year nineteen s two, Uh, when someone from the descendants 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:47.760 of the keyboard typewriter looks over and sees the descendants 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:50.560 of the non keyboard typewriter. They don't know what to 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:52.200 make of it. They don't know what they're looking at. 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:55.319 So there's a concept you talk about in the book 0:09:55.840 --> 0:10:00.760 that you call the techno linguistic dimensions of a language. 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:02.800 And I was wondering if you could explain a little 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:06.240 bit about what you mean by the techno linguistic dimensions 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:09.240 of a language. And so, for example, what are some 0:10:09.400 --> 0:10:14.040 of the techno linguistic aspects of modern American English? Has 0:10:14.080 --> 0:10:16.600 a point of reference for our listeners, And then how 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:21.280 how do those same types of techno linguistic dimensions inform 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:24.920 the creation of the Chinese typewriter in history? In essence, 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:33.600 the techno linguistic dimension is every part of writing text 0:10:33.640 --> 0:10:40.880 technology that is essential for writing to work and for 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:46.120 text technologies to function, but that are not uh simply 0:10:46.160 --> 0:10:49.040 superficially on the page or on the screen the stuff 0:10:49.080 --> 0:10:52.679 we read. And so, to give an example, I remember 0:10:53.640 --> 0:10:56.360 earlier when I was in the early stages of working 0:10:56.559 --> 0:11:00.640 on this project. I am a big believer in kind 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:04.560 of practice based theory. So take classes and things and 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:08.199 really try to understand the processes and machines you're thinking about, 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:12.760 because insight will emerge in that and so I I 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:18.720 enrolled in this intensive letter press practicum, so movable type 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:22.679 type setting and for for English, because I wanted to 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:26.720 step into you know, this space that there are obviously 0:11:26.800 --> 0:11:30.360 many many practitioners of even today, but certainly over history, 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:33.120 and just see what it looks like. And there was one. 0:11:33.480 --> 0:11:35.200 I mean, it's an amazing I took it at the 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:37.880 San Francisco Center for the book. It was just absolutely 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:41.400 tremendous um. But there's one thing in particular that stayed 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:45.000 with me, which is seems might seem incidental to someone 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:47.320 who is in that world for a long time, and 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:50.680 that is when when you or I looked at a 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:55.400 printed poster or a book or an article or whatever 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:58.200 it is, uh, and we see the you know, the 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:00.199 text block in the middle of the page each and 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:02.320 then we see the margins, the one inch margins on 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:05.439 the left and right to the top and bottom. I 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:07.880 would venture to guess that you, as as I, we 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:11.800 see emptiness, we see space. We see there is nothing there. Yes, 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:14.960 there's paper, but that's not where the text is. And 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:18.120 so if you, if you just stopped there, it would 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:21.840 be easy to imagine that that it really is made 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:25.160 up of nothingness. There's nothing there that's not where language happens, 0:12:25.200 --> 0:12:28.200 and so forth. When you when you go through the 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:32.240 process of learning, in this case letter press, UH, you 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:35.520 realize that you actually have to build emptiness. You have 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:38.520 to build a space on the page quite literally, with 0:12:38.559 --> 0:12:42.120 pieces of metal. So if you want there to be 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:46.880 spacing between the lines, you need you need letting union. 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:49.040 This is not just a digital term in our you 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:52.160 know abe platform. This is a this is a thin 0:12:52.360 --> 0:12:56.600 sliver of metal whose whose dimensionality will will give you 0:12:56.760 --> 0:12:59.439 so much space between the lines. And then you use 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:04.080 these various sized pieces of wood uh sometimes referred to 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:08.920 as furniture, that you build up around the block of 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:11.880 text that you're going to situate on the page. You 0:13:11.960 --> 0:13:14.200 lock it in there really tight with these things called 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:16.679 coins that you kind of put in place, and then 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:20.199 kind of jack into position and hold it onto the 0:13:19.679 --> 0:13:22.800 the type bed so it doesn't wiggle around when you're 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:25.760 printing UM. And then and then you put you know, 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:27.839 you you ink it, and you pull the paper through 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:29.920 and then it comes out on the other side, and 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:31.760 there you have it, a text block with one inch 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:35.320 margins and some much space and emptiness and so much 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:38.959 text like black on white, and suddenly your view of space, 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:41.920 or at least for me, the view of space changed radically. 0:13:41.960 --> 0:13:44.920 It takes a lot of stuff to make nothing happen. 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:48.080 It takes a lot of And these and these pieces 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:50.680 of wooden furniture they don't have writing on them. I 0:13:50.679 --> 0:13:55.320 can't read a piece of these, you know, these wooden blocks. Um, 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:58.960 So they're not operating in the same kind of heuristic 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:02.280 interpretive space as the actual Let's say it's a poem 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:04.720 by a you know, or or an essay or a 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:07.120 broadside that I can read and think about and debate, 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:09.240 and maybe it's a love letter or a wedding invitation. 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:11.680 All of this stuff that's so full of meaning in 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:14.440 the classic sense of the word. Well, there's all of 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:18.760 this meaninglessness, like these wooden pieces of things, like these, 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:21.120 these flats of metal that have to be you know, 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:25.200 for letting. Um, there's all of this meaninglessness that goes 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:28.960 into making that meaning work, whether whether it's a wedding 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:34.520 invitation or you know, or or an iconoclastic essay. Um 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:40.480 that would that metal is for me, part of this 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:44.720 admittedly very large category of techno linguistic It's all of 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:48.920 the the stuff, but also also all of the mental models, 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:54.080 categorization systems, workflows and processes and things that go into 0:14:54.120 --> 0:15:00.400 making something work on the page. Experts, practition in ners. 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:03.840 People in these industries they know these things. I mean, 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:06.320 it's second nature for them. So it's it's not as 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:10.800 if I've discovered the Lost City of Atlantis. But um, 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:13.640 if they do their job well and and if they 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:16.760 succeed in their goal, their goal is to keep that 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:20.600 stuff invisible. You know, you don't want you don't want 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:24.520 a badly printed poem that kind of show, you know, something, 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:26.440 maybe maybe to get some ink gout on one of 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:29.800 those pieces of wood and an accidentally in the page. Well, 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:32.080 that's failure, you know that. That means it didn't work out. 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:36.360 You want that techno linguistic stuff to remain invisible. Um. 0:15:37.160 --> 0:15:42.800 And but as for myself, as an historian of language change, 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:49.920 of text technologies, of especially of a family of text 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:53.560 technologies on the Chinese side, that, as I argue in 0:15:53.600 --> 0:15:58.200 the book, has had been placed in this very asymmetric 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:03.160 unequal position in the global history of information technology. We 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:06.160 as the storians of information technology, we we really do 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:11.680 need to pay attention to that meaninglessness. Because oftentimes it's 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:14.520 in the space of the meaninglessness, not the not the 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:17.800 stuff that's on the page, the poem itself, where the 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:20.760 action is. Sometimes it is, but it's it's not necessarily 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:23.320 in the poem where the actions it might actually be 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:28.480 in the stuff around the poem that makes that poem 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:34.640 printapal transmittable, sabable in the first place. An example from 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:40.080 Asia that I really like to show actually comes from Japan. 0:16:40.920 --> 0:16:46.640 There's this there's this wonderful YouTube video that shows a 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:54.080 turn of the century Japanese automaton, a calligraphy automaton. It 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:59.360 is constructed to look um like a Chinese woman with 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:04.280 a brush in hand, and when the gears move uh, 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:10.440 the the automaton composes a really beautifully wrought Chinese character 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:16.080 Kanji character. And the video shows I think it's newscasters. 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:19.600 It's part of a news broadcast in Japan contemporary maybe 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.040 a few years ago, showing people you know, like looing 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:25.879 and eyeing about this, and everyone is paying attention to 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:29.960 what's happening on the page, the character and what it 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:33.320 looks like as it comes out. But then in the back, 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:35.439 in the sort of the end of the video and 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:40.120 also behind the automaton for me, is where the actual 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:48.040 action is. They show the carefully carved series of really 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:54.679 woobily and wobbily wooden camshafts that are tucked away in 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:58.720 the back of the base of the automaton that when 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:01.320 this kind of it's kind of hard to describe. When 0:18:01.320 --> 0:18:06.000 they's guiding almost almost like almost like a record a 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:10.920 record player, arm and needle is is tracing over these 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:17.040 camshafts as they turn. It's translating the machine is translating 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:20.920 the shape of those camshafts into the movement of the automaton, 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:24.639 which is then producing this perfect character on the page. 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:31.040 For me, those wooden camshafts uh at the construction of them, 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:34.199 the figuring out what shape each one needs to be 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:36.560 and what sequence and how do we build this device 0:18:36.640 --> 0:18:39.679 that translates it into a character that to me is 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:43.280 actually the location of language. But if we were to 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:47.000 take those camshafts, you know, disassemble the machine, and I 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:49.520 just hand you a bunch of they look like you know, 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:53.640 they look like wooden plates, but they're not perfectly circular. 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:56.080 They've got a wobbly, wobbly kind of edge. If I 0:18:56.160 --> 0:19:00.679 just handed them to you and said, what character is this? What? What? What? 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:04.240 What Japanese character is this? You couldn't read it. The 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:06.520 only way that it produces that character is in this 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:10.399 careful sequence. Um. So this is this is for me 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:14.680 at least, this is really interesting. Those those wooden camshafts, 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:17.240 you know, crafted by hand and at the you know, 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:22.760 in the late nineteenth late late nine or twentieth century. These, Um, 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:27.439 these camshafts are not a representation of that character, of 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:30.280 that Japanese character that comes out the other side. They 0:19:30.359 --> 0:19:35.640 quite literally are that character when assembled in a particular sequence. 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:39.960 So that's that's to me is the techno linguistic. It 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:45.919 is this vast space of expert action and care and 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:51.320 attention and practice. Um. But it's not something you can 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:54.840 just simply read, uh, in a naked eye sense, the 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:56.760 way that we might be able to read an essay 0:19:56.840 --> 0:19:59.239 or a poem and debate about it. But all of 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:04.240 this meaning business, this uninterpretability is what makes language work. 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:09.960 Without it, language just ceases to function in any language, Chinese, English, Japanese, 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:13.639 you name it. That explanation almost makes me think of 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:17.360 like the base pairs or the gene, the generator phenotype 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:20.160 in an animal that we only interact with the external 0:20:20.160 --> 0:20:24.359 phenotype unless you're a genetic engineer researcher, but that the 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:28.560 thing in the external world is literally generated by this, 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:31.440 you know, behind the scenes code. I think that's right. 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:35.800 I think, I mean, I think that it's it's uh, 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:37.840 it's something that if you were just you just look 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:40.320 at it at the face of it, and this is true. 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:42.159 And you know, this is true in the realm of 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:45.960 certainly in the realm of early computing and contemporary computing. 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:51.440 The you know, if we we experience our MacBook prose 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:54.760 the way that we do because of the success of 0:20:54.840 --> 0:20:57.520 a series of engineers and product designers who went out 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:01.080 of their way to conceal as much as possible what's 0:21:01.160 --> 0:21:03.920 really going on. So when I type the letter, when 0:21:03.920 --> 0:21:07.000 I when I depressed the key that has the symbol 0:21:07.080 --> 0:21:10.040 that I recognize as F or G or H on it, 0:21:10.359 --> 0:21:13.840 and then it appears on the screen. It happened so 0:21:14.040 --> 0:21:18.000 fast that I can kind of live inside the fantasy, 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:21.800 live inside the fiction that in essence, this thing is 0:21:21.840 --> 0:21:24.080 just like a digital typewriter. It's just I push it, 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:26.320 it translated some motion and then it put printed it 0:21:26.320 --> 0:21:29.320 on the page. But of course that's not how it works. 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:32.960 I mean, there's there's all of these translations going on 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:35.879 to get from point A to point double Z. There's 0:21:36.520 --> 0:21:40.280 there's regulations and coding standards and and then quite literally 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:46.919 you know, physical logic gates and and um. But and 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:49.199 so that space. If you were just to take away 0:21:49.359 --> 0:21:52.640 the key that says F and take away the screen, 0:21:53.520 --> 0:21:56.919 that that basically all the screen is doing is showing 0:21:56.920 --> 0:22:00.199 you that the bit stream worked. But in men Gin, 0:22:00.280 --> 0:22:02.159 what it looks like if you take away the screen 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:06.040 and take away the symbols on the keys, what exactly 0:22:06.200 --> 0:22:09.200 is the letter s at that point? It's still there. 0:22:09.560 --> 0:22:11.520 If you were to push the button and the computers 0:22:11.560 --> 0:22:13.960 on it would still be doing what it's supposed to 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:18.880 be doing. But the the the kind of circuit of 0:22:19.080 --> 0:22:22.480 interpretation that the human needs would not be complete. I 0:22:22.520 --> 0:22:25.119 would not know whether or not I what letter I 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:28.000 had had had type. So what I'm interested in I 0:22:28.000 --> 0:22:31.040 mean not to the exclusion of the surface parts of language, 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:34.960 but I think I want to include the spaces of 0:22:35.080 --> 0:22:40.359 language which, like the genotype phenotype relationship, are happening in 0:22:40.400 --> 0:22:48.520 this completely dark room. Um, you know, how how do 0:22:48.560 --> 0:22:52.000 we think about the genotype without recourse to the phenotype 0:22:52.800 --> 0:22:54.480 might be one way to put it, but I'm not 0:22:54.480 --> 0:22:57.679 sure if that gets us any any further. All Right, 0:22:57.680 --> 0:22:59.280 we're gonna take a quick break and when we come 0:22:59.280 --> 0:23:05.399 back more with Thomas Mullaney. Alright, we're back, so too 0:23:05.440 --> 0:23:10.120 many Westerners Mandarin Chinese present certain challenges. Chinese characters present 0:23:10.160 --> 0:23:12.800 certain challenges, to say the least. But can you explain 0:23:12.880 --> 0:23:16.040 some of the challenges that Chinese characters were seen to 0:23:16.200 --> 0:23:20.720 pose to China itself in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Definitely, 0:23:20.760 --> 0:23:25.399 there were there were many, um many that I would say, 0:23:26.320 --> 0:23:29.560 many problems that were that that were sort of deservedly 0:23:29.800 --> 0:23:32.960 laid at the feet of Chinese character writing, and some 0:23:33.680 --> 0:23:37.000 that I think a sober analysis of history would say 0:23:37.000 --> 0:23:41.919 it was an unfair thing to blame characters for. Um So, 0:23:43.760 --> 0:23:45.800 I mean there's a there's a sort of it, there's 0:23:45.840 --> 0:23:49.600 a series. One of them would certainly be that in 0:23:49.640 --> 0:23:54.240 the late nineteenth century into the early twenty century, China 0:23:54.400 --> 0:23:57.760 is undergoing, like many polities on Earth around this time, 0:23:57.840 --> 0:24:04.160 is undergoing a uh a transition, and it's an uneasy one, 0:24:04.240 --> 0:24:09.760 a transition between one form of organizing political power and 0:24:09.880 --> 0:24:13.119 state craft so and it's kind of wrapped up in 0:24:13.160 --> 0:24:18.480 the nutshell of the word empire U two a republic 0:24:19.440 --> 0:24:22.000 and so you know, this is this This takes a 0:24:22.040 --> 0:24:24.760 revolution to happen. It takes it arguably takes a civil 0:24:24.760 --> 0:24:27.960 war to complete this transition. But one part of this 0:24:28.080 --> 0:24:36.639 transition was a radical reconceptualization of where legitimacy for state 0:24:37.560 --> 0:24:42.399 uh state rulers derives it, not the shift from the 0:24:42.480 --> 0:24:46.600 derivation from heaven of the right to rule to a 0:24:46.600 --> 0:24:48.800 a shift at least in people, you know, in the 0:24:48.880 --> 0:24:54.119 argument to the people, whatever this word means. Well, one 0:24:54.160 --> 0:24:56.200 of the issues, and this is this happens in many 0:24:56.359 --> 0:24:59.399 of these sort of empire to nation state transitions, is 0:24:59.400 --> 0:25:02.800 that people say, well, we need more of our people 0:25:02.960 --> 0:25:08.600 to be involved or part of this political enterprise that 0:25:08.640 --> 0:25:10.840