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Tom Mullaney Profile picture
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21 Jul, 9 tweets, 5 min read
In China, suburban garages don't factor in the lore of computing history the way they do in the U.S. But prisons do – at least, one particular prison in which a Chinese engineer was sentenced to solitary confinement for thought crimes against Mao /1

psyche.co/ideas/how-a-so…
His name was Zhi Bingyi and, during long and anxiety-ridden days, months and years of solitude, he made a breakthrough that helped launch China’s personal computing revolution: he helped make it possible to type Chinese with a QWERTY keyboard. /2

psyche.co/ideas/how-a-so… Image
Unsure if he would ever see his wife again, and with no work to occupy his mind, Zhi filled the long hours staring at an 8-character poster on the wall:

坦白从宽，抗拒从严
‘Leniency For Those Who Confess, Severity For Those Who Resist’

psyche.co/ideas/how-a-so…
By the 100th reading – perhaps the 1,000th – Zhi began to explode these characters in his mind. The first character (坦), for example, could be readily divided into two distinct parts: 土 and 旦, and then further still into + and −

psyche.co/ideas/how-a-so…
Zhi managed to get hold of a pen, but paper was impossible to find. Instead, he used the lid of a teacup, which his captors provided him to drink hot water. When turned over, Zhi discovered, the lid was large enough to fit a few dozen Latin letters.

psyche.co/ideas/how-a-so… Image
Sino-US normalisation brought was an influx of US-built computers and computing equipment into the PRC, personal computers in particular. US companies regarded China as an immense, untapped market for the ‘personal computing revolution’.

psyche.co/ideas/how-a-so… Image
Suddenly, Zhi and his teacup hallucinations took on immense real-world applications. The ‘spelling’ system he made might be the key to cracking the code of QWERTY-based Chinese computing.

psyche.co/ideas/how-a-so… Image
Zhi came on the radar of engineers and technologists in the PRC, as well as two foreign organisations – the Olympia Werke company, a towering presence in the history of German precision engineering, and the Graphics Arts Research Foundation in the US.

psyche.co/ideas/how-a-so… Image
Zhi was sitting in a darkened cell, with long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of dread, tracing out ephemeral alphabetic codes on the underside of a teacup, and eventually dreaming of a fully mature Chinese-language information environment.

psyche.co/ideas/how-a-so… Image

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More from @tsmullaney

Tom Mullaney Profile picture
6 May
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?
(I was so moved and inspired by everyone’s help yesterday, that I thought it best to ask the wisdom of the crowd again!)
ps I should mention: I have access to ALL of the process documents and rough drafts. It is an *unbelievably* cool archival collection!!!
Read 5 tweets
Tom Mullaney Profile picture
16 Mar
Everyone in my feed seems to agree with this article, here and on FB, so I should probably keep quiet. Instead, and at risk of a pile-on, here's a thread on why I disagree. 🧵

timeshighereducation.com/opinion/academ… via @timeshighered
1) it's definitely true that we profs are terrible videographers and editors when compared to professionals. But, for the most part, we are also terrible lecturers and lesson designers. Having room to grow is not a reason not to do something. It's a reason to try harder.
2) I’m not sure that the purpose of the lecture hall in the wake of the print revolution was dialogue between instructor and students. The roundtable and salon yes, but not the 200-person amphitheater. Over time, lectures became more about dialogue. There is no "golden age."
Read 15 tweets
Tom Mullaney Profile picture
18 Nov 20
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!): mitpress.mit.edu/books/your-com…
@tsmullaney Your Computer is On Fire
@histoftech When Did the Fire Start?
@NEnsmenger The Cloud is a Factory
@ubiquity75 Your AI is a Human
@bjpeters A Network is Not a Network
@techno_kavi The Internet Will Be Decolonized
@mitalithakor Capture is Pleasure
/2
@histoftech Sexism is a Feature, Not a Bug
Corinna Schlombs | Gender is a Corporate Tool
@Halcyon_L Siri Disciplines
@safiyanoble Your Robot Isn’t Neutral
@andrealstanton Broken is Word
@noahwf You Can’t Make Games About Much
@JanetAbbateVT Coding is Not Empowerment
/3
Read 5 tweets
Tom Mullaney Profile picture
17 Nov 20
.@StanfordDaily asked for a comment, and here is what I said re: this official response from @Stanford to @ScottWAtlas /1
“What Atlas wrote was unequivocally wrong, and yet Stanford's official statement was insipid and spineless. Gmail's AI auto-responder could have done better job.” /2
“So many of us love Stanford--truly love this place--and what we're yearning for is leadership. True, heartfelt, blood-temperature leadership.” /3
Read 6 tweets
Tom Mullaney Profile picture
18 Jul 20
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.
Pro Tip: run multiple searches, using different spellings/variations of your term
Pro Pro Trip: you can also use multiple terms. Just run the search as “XYZ” AND “ABC” AND “Finding Aid”
And don’t be a greedy researcher: RT this tip RIGHT NOW :)
Read 4 tweets
Tom Mullaney Profile picture
6 Jul 20
6 years ago, Congressional Republicans & @GOP tried to drag my research, and my name, through the mud. I've never told this story, but now it's time. I also made a video about it, which you can check out here: THREAD /1
A bit of background: I wrote a book called the Chinese Typewriter, which came out @mitpress a few years back. A history of Chinese information technology from the 1930s to the 1950s. A sequel to the book, all about Chinese computing, is coming @mitpress as well. /2
When I was still an untenured Assistant Professor @Stanford I was feverishly applying for sabbatical grants (I'm sure many readers know the feeling). One of the grants I applied for was the @NSF grant for humanists and social scientists /3
Read 25 tweets

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