ABSTRACT
Despite Socrates’ caution that writing gave the “appearance of wisdom instead of wisdom itself” (Plato, 1988, para. 275), humans have always desired means and media to preserve and reproduce expressions of their culture and history (H.Martin, 1988). History shows that different cultures developed technologies to create these means (hardware) and media (software) to accommodate their socioeconomic needs and to extend knowledge (Fang, 1997), or, as David Sholle (2002) puts it about technologies, they “do not simply fulfill a function in meeting natural needs, but rather their development is caught up in the social construction of needs” (p. 7). The history of writing technologies reveals a past, containing stories of competition and secrecy, of stability and portability, of resistance and acceptance, and of refinement and use. Although scientific observation often initiated changes in writing technologies, others appeared, as it so often happens, by sheer luck. Furthermore, some changes evolved slowly whereas others appeared rapidly. The writing stylus, for example, has kept a basic form for centuries, and the printing press changed little in appearance from Guttenberg’s original 15th-century design until the early 19th century. As electricity’s use and the development of electronics arrived, changes in technologies-in both form and function-accelerated. This chapter briefly explores significant developments in writing technologies that enabled humans to record the important, as well as the mundane, facts about their lives, and it places those developments into three somewhat permeable categories: manual, mechanical, and electrical/electronic technologies.
