Stanford Teacher of the Year, Chinese Computing & IT + Where Research Begins, Father of 2,
#firstgen
, Historian, Guggenheim Fellow, Songwriter, LOC Kluge Chair
Making the 1st digital fonts for Chinese in the 70s & 80s was
extremely
hard
work.
Each character was 256 bits
Or really: 256 choices re: where to put a pixel, or not, inside a tiny grid.
1000s of characters, 100s of 1000s of choices.
HELP! Where can I pitch this article?
Our new
#FLOTUS
Jill Biden holds a doctorate in education with a dissertation entitled “Student Retention at the Community College: Meeting Students' Needs”
Despite spanning over 60 degrees of latitude, China has only 1 time zone, "Beijing Time" (UTC+8).
The unification of time in the PRC is a fascinating topic that has not been explored nearly enough in the literature. /THREAD
This is a fascinating post, even beyond the reasons one might expect! Jumping right in, the Chinese characters 中國航空公司 appear pixelated, almost like low-resolution bitmap fonts... Cool, huh? But wait there's more... /1 Thread cc
@yifanxxx
My Mother died yesterday, less than 48 hours after the birth of our son. She waited up as long as she could, to know that Arthur got in safe, and then she went to sleep.
For Merri Mullaney (1945-2021) and Arthur Vernari Mullaney (2021- )
How I wish you two could have met.
In 1947, a young woman demo’ed the
@IBM
Electric Chinese Typewriter.
70 years later, I finally found her, and learned her story.
It’s amazing.
I need a magazine or newspaper I can pitch this article to! HELP PLEASE!
They "couldn't really tell the difference between whether I was Chinese or Japanese or Korean or if I even spoke English. They would talk very loudly and very slow."
A thread re:
#MichelleYeoh
& how 1 barometer of Anti-Asianism is the portrayal of Chinese-language technology /1
Researching The Chinese Typewriter & The Chinese Computer also brought me to the Huntington Library, which houses one of the oldest surviving Chinese typewriters in the world.
As I reflect on the process of researching & writing The Chinese Typewriter and The Chinese Computer, I thought I highlight sites worldwide that house critical sources on the history of Chinese, Asian, and Non-Western IT. In no order,
#1
is the BnF in Paris
"Balls Out" is not a sexual expression referring to genitalia. It refers to the Maxwell Governor, a proto-Cybernetic device that managed a machine's operating speed via a centrifugally controlled valve. The hotter the machine ran, the faster the governor spun (hence: Balls Out).
I know there are more pressing things, but I can't pull myself away from prep for my Spring 2020 course, Global History 1c (Modern period). I'm crafting it around 9 graphic novels. I think each will be paired with 1 journal article/chapter, and of course, archival work
Secret Way to Find Archival Materials in the U.S.
Go to Google
Enter this in your search bar, exactly: “XYZ” AND “Finding Aid”
Replace XYZ with your phrase, name, term
Enjoy!
90% of results will be from Archives, Special Collections, etc.
There’s a deeper history to “Chinese Alphabets” like this. Much of it orientalist, exoticizing, racist. But some is ad admixture of eccentrism + brilliance, spear-headed by Chinese inventors—esp. ones interested in Telegraphy, Computing, and Chinese I.T. more broadly. THREAD/1
my 3rd grader came home with this today from school, excited to show me how he’d written his name in Chinese. I had to gently explain to him that this is, uh… extremely Not Correct
It's an honor & dream-come-true to receive the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching,
@Stanford
University's highest teaching prize.
I am beyond grateful to my students, advisees, and colleagues.
I am so happy and honored to share this news: I just received the the John K. Fairbank Prize for The Chinese Typewriter: A History (
@mitpress
@WEAI_Columbia
2017)
As a
@Stanford
historian I find this utterly intolerable and repulsive. It is a breach of ethics, and a gross abuse of power. What will the response be
@HooverInst
@StanfordAlumni
In February 2016, I signed a 3-book contract with
@mitpress
In May 2024, just 5 months away, I finally make good on that commitment.
(Thank you for your patience, MITP!)
In China, a vast, vibrant, & illegal publishing world exploded in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Using little more than Chinese typewriters, mimeograph machines & stencils, a “Chinese Zine Revolution” was launched.
HELP: I’d love to pitch this story 2 a mag/newspaper, but where?
I'm now officially (both) a Professor of History (and) a Professor of East Asian Language and Cultures, by Courtesy! This is an honor, and I greatly appreciate my colleagues
@Stanford
EALC for this invitation and formal review.
It is an absolute thrill to share the cover of our forthcoming book, Your Computer is on Fire, set to come out in March 2021 w/
@mitpress
| Co-edited with
@bjpeters
@histoftech
and
@techno_kavi
More info here (+ TOC in the thread below!):
Long before Xu Bing’s famed Square Word Calligraphy, Chinese-American psychotherapist H.C. Tien shattered boundaries btw Chinese & Latin script.
His “Chinese Transalphabet” had 1000s of Sino-Latin “ambigrams”
Art? No.
An attempt 2 solve Chinese computing!
Where 2 pitch story?
At first glance, a Chinese instruction manual of some kind.
But look closely: everything here - every single word without exception - is in English.
This is An Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy, a livre d'artiste by the acclaimed Chinese contemporary artist Xu Bing. 1/7
Very bad news for China scholars, via a colleague: “The Cybersecurity Administration of China (CAC) has recently imposed new oversight requirements on Chinese publishers and exporters of information.” /1
It’s an honor and thrill to share that I just signed w/
@wwnorton
for a book I’ve been writing for 20 years.
It’s called How We Disappear.
It’s a study of Entropy & Information + a memoir about the death of my father & mother.
Xu Bing 徐冰 & Wang Min 王敏 wrote prefaces for the Chinese translation of The Chinese Typewriter, out next month.
I just found out and I'm speechless.
Good night.
cc
@mitpress
@WEAI_Columbia
Making the 1st digital fonts for Chinese in the 70s & 80s was EXTREMELY HARD.
Each character = 256 bits
256 choices: to put a pixel, or not, inside a tiny grid.
1000s of characters, 100,000s of choices.
My latest
@techreview
--A dream come true, thx 2
@AmyNordrum
👇👇👇
The Chinese Computer is now fully revised and in production.
More info soon on pub date.
Thank you so, so much to the brilliant ms workshop participants & other colleagues who helped me in this critical phase
@mitpress
@WEAI_Columbia
@ComputerHistory
@IEEEComputerSoc
It can take 10 years (520 weeks) to write a serious work of scholarship. It takes 1 week to read one. It takes 1 second to be an Anti-Intellectual
Be proud of what you do, your commitment, and your patience.
As I get ready to turn 40 this Saturday, I'm excited to share: my department voted recently to promote me to the position of Full Professor. I have so many people to thank that I don't know where to begin.
Grateful & proud to announce: The Chinese Typewriter has just been awarded the Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Technics, by
@MediaEcology
cc
@mitpress
@WEAI_Columbia
Friend: "Congratulations on how the book is doing in China!"
Me:🫥?
(...checks🧑💻)
"The Chinese Typewriter" is
#9
of *all* Non-Fiction books on Douban this week, with 100+ reviews, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️, 9.8 out of 10 rating
😳🫠🙃
中文打字机
cc
@mitpress
In 1940, Toshiba produced a new kind of typewriter, featuring a horizontal cylinder featuring 1172 Japanese and Chinese characters. This system remained in production until 1954
[full video: ]
[read more: ]
The Chinese Computer is finally coming out. 15 years in the making...
Help please! I need advice.
Which languages would you like to see it translated into?
Which presses would make a good home for it?
As an archival historian used to looking at photographs 100 years old, just know this: Given time, you are going to look fucking awesome in every single photo that has ever been taken of you. So relax, don’t be so self-conscious, and just live your life.
For 21 years, I've been working on a book, mainly in secret.
During Coming to Terms with the Nation, I was writing it.
During The Chinese Typewriter, I was, too.
During The Chinese Computer, I was, too.
I finished it yesterday.
Lots more editing in store, but here it is.
After the 1911 revolution, the Republic of China established the Central Observatory & proposed a 5-part division of time to bring the country in accordance with international norms. These 5 time zones included Changbai, Central, Long-Shu, Hui-Zang, & Kunlun zones. /4
Prepping my Chinese/East Asian Information Technology History Collection for donation, to make it available to fellow scholars.
Upon donation it will be the largest collection of its kind in the entire world. Indeed, no history of Chinese IT will be complete w/o consulting it.
The ridicule of Chinese IT has a *long* history, dating back to Chinese typewriting. As I tried to show in The Chinese Typewriter (
@mitpress
), 1900 was a turning point where people began to deride the Chinese language/language tech as a proxy for anti-Chinese racism /4
How to get undergrads to ask better questions of their sources? I saw a tweet with this question, and wanted to share one exercise that works with me. /1
Univeristy Presses need to start publishing peer-reviewed mini-essays. 8000 words, exquisitely designed books, low cost, print and digital, like the Oxford Shorts series but tighter. God, I’d love to be the Series Editor. Any interest
@mitpress
@stanfordpress
@UChicagoPress
...?
Stanford admin is crass and oblivious enough to ask us “Which to fund: PhD students or
@stanfordpress
?” to which we say: “Bullsh** We don’t accept the premise.” It’s 100% hypocrisy to say you’re pro-PhD student, then burn down the ecology in which they begin their careers
When you spend 16 years on a project, you lose people along the way.
Family, like my Mom and Dad.
Friends and Colleagues, like Bruce Rosenblum & Halcyon Lawrence.
People who invited me into their worlds, like Lois Lew.
I dedicate The Chinese Computer to them.
Thrilled 2 announce that Christopher Rea (UBC) & I have signed a contract with
@uchicagopress
for a book (tentatively) called:
WHERE RESEARCH BEGINS: Choosing a Research Project that Matters to You (and the World)
It took us 18 years to write.
Now it's done & arrives Spr '22
Just received an email from Condoleezza Rice, who saw my video.
I promised 2 compile a list for her of early career historians of China & India.
Whose work should *every* former NSA/Secretary of State read?
I’ll start:
@kellyahammond
@DGTam86
Post your recs here pls👇
Before Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Yeoh's early U.S. film debut was with the James Bond franchise. Yeoh later revealed how depleting/damaging the experience was for her.
/3
16 years &... the book is out. Thanks to countless colleagues, friends, loved ones who made it happen.
Thanks+ to
@mitpress
for putting in so much effort.
Yesterday alone, 3 outlets featured it (
@FastCompany
@SCMPNews
@techreview
) & I'm grateful 🧵
It’s official!
@UChicagoPress
will be publishing the “Secret Book” that my friend Christopher Rea and I spent 18 years writing. Title = TBA, but it’s a guide on How to Begin a Research Project. Thrilled to join The Craft of Research, From Dissertation to Book, Turabian...
Tenured professors: plz share 1 thing you’re doing right now (beyond normal duties) to help your junior colleagues & to make academia an incrementally more humane and just place to work
Studying Chinese Typewriters and Chinese Computers over the past 16 years also brought me into contact w/ the world-famous Chinese poster collection by Stefan Landsberger.
This is my personal favorite, merging Mao-era propaganda & Chinese typewriters
Quick Friday poll: would anyone watch a documentary on the history of Chinese computing and new media? Maybe also including Asia more broadly? Interviews, cool graphics, compelling storyline?
While scholars have explored the standardization of time in a Euro-American context, little attention has been paid to China's trajectory. China was not represented at any major events related to global time, & the origins of Beijing Time remain somewhat shrouded in mystery. /3
What I recall, because of my work on Chinese IT history, was the strange cameo made by a Chinese computer, in which the presumed otherness/alterity/strangeness/absurdity of Chinese IT was on display /3
Imagine if, one day,
E
n
g
l
i
s
h
w
a
s
w
r
i
t
t
e
n
l
i
k
e
t
h
i
s
.
That’s what happened 2 Chinese in the 1910s, the opposite way: VERTICAL ➡️HORIZONTAL (at least on the mainland)
A fascinating story full of eccentric characters.
HELP! Where can I pitch this story?
The Chinese Computer is done.
It comes out May 2024
@mitpress
I can't thank enough all the friends, family, students and colleagues who made this 15-year journey possible.
Here is the dedication.
Final Hours to Sign-Up for the "Secret Syllabus" Mentorship Programs!
An amazing group from 60 colleges in 13 different countries have signed up so far!