{"id":11147,"date":"2012-07-26T08:13:11","date_gmt":"2012-07-26T12:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=11147"},"modified":"2012-07-26T12:47:50","modified_gmt":"2012-07-26T16:47:50","slug":"nietzsches-transformative-typewriter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2012\/07\/26\/nietzsches-transformative-typewriter\/","title":{"rendered":"Nietzsche\u2019s Transformative Typewriter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing Tools and the Instrumentalist Conception of Technology<\/em>\"\"<\/a>My recent article in The Atlantic<\/em>, \u201cThe Philosophy of the Technology of the Gun<\/a>,\u201d is provocative in part because it suggests tools like guns might have more power of us than meets the eye. Given widely held views about autonomy (e.g., the notion that \u201cguns don\u2019t kill people, people kill people\u201d), this alternative way of looking at things can cause anxiety, especially when misunderstood and translated into terms like those offered by the first commenter<\/a>, \u201cGuns are magic mind control machines.\u201d The article presented an account of how humans relate to technology, and to further illuminate those relations, I\u2019ll briefly revisit media theorist Friedrich Kittler\u2019s<\/a> take on Friedrich Nietzche\u2019s<\/a> use of the typewriter. Like my gun essay, this analysis challenges the \u201cinstrumentalist\u201d conception of technology.<\/p>\n

In Gramophone, Film, Typewriter<\/em>,<\/a> Kittler contends that in order to understand how Nietzsche coped with myopia, it is crucial to grasp the import of him by buying a typewriter<\/a>: a Danish model invented by Hans Rasmus Johann Malling Hanson. Given the lack of philosophical precedent, Kittler characterizes Nietzsche as the \u201cfirst mechanized philosopher,\u201d and argues that integrating the typewriter into the writing process facilitated several changes to the act of writing itself, profoundly impacting Nietzsche\u2019s thought and style.<\/p>\n

Kittler stresses how typewriters alter the physical connection between writer and text.\u00a0 Unlike the visual attention that writing by hand requires, the typewriter made it possible to create texts by exploiting a blind, tactile power that can harness \u201ca historically new proficiency: \u00e9criture automatique.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 Given the report of a Frankfurt eye doctor, which stated that Nietzsche\u2019s \u201cright eye could only perceive mistaken and distorted images,\u201d and Nietzsche\u2019s own claim to find reading and writing painful after twenty minutes, we can appreciate why he would turn to a writing device that could be operated simply by pressing briefly on a key\u2014a key that doesn\u2019t even need to be looked at.\u00a0 Indeed, the Malling Hanson was specifically designed to \u201ccompensate for physical deficiencies\u201d by having the capacity to \u201cbe guided solely by one\u2019s sense of touch.\u201d<\/p>\n

When considering this shift from sight to touch, it is instructive to follow Kittler\u2019s lead and recall that by the 1940\u2019s, Martin Heidegger<\/a>, a philosopher who might have ethical blindness, but did not suffer from Nietzsche\u2019s physical maladies, famously expressed a position about automatic writing that ran contrary to Nietzsche\u2019s enthusiasm.\u00a0 Underwritten by a conception of the human hand being utterly distinctive, Heidegger articulated distain for the typewriter\u2019s speediness.\u00a0 He preferred the slower moving ink pen, insisting the device is more conducive to fostering deep philosophical thought.\u00a0 When discussing the Greek sense of action, pragma<\/em>, in his lectures on Parmenides<\/em><\/a>, Heidegger thus makes the following claims,<\/p>\n

Man himself acts [handelt<\/em>] through the hand [Hand<\/em>]; for the hand is, together with the word, the essential distinction of man.\u00a0 Only a being which, like man, \u201chas\u201d the word, can and must \u201chave\u201d \u201cthe hand.\u201d\u2026No animal has a hand and a hand never originates from a paw or claw or talon\u2026The hand sprang forth only out of the word and together with the word.\u00a0 Man does not \u201chave\u201d hands, but the hand holds the essence of man, because the word as the essential realm of the hand is the ground of the essence of man.\u00a0 The word as what is inscribed and what appears is the written word, i.e., script.\u00a0 And the word as script is handwriting.<\/p>\n

It is not accidental that the modern man writes \u201cwith\u201d the typewriter and \u201cdictates\u201d [diktiert<\/em>] \u201cinto\u201d a machine.\u00a0 This \u201chistory\u201d of writing is one of the man reasons for the increasing destruction of the word.\u00a0 The latter no longer comes and goes by means of the writing hand, the properly acting hand, but b the means of the mechanical forces it releases.\u00a0 The typewriter tears writing from the essential realm of the hand, i.e., the realm of the word.\u00a0 The word itself turns into something \u201ctyped.\u201d\u2026Mechanical writing deprives the hand of its rank in the realm of the written word and degrades the word to a means of communication.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is not the appropriate space to try to resolve the different philosophical perspectives on the typewriter.\u00a0 Doing so would require a detailed discussion of whether Heidegger\u2019s position depends upon unjustifiable skepticism about natural evolution, and whether his conclusions lead to a nostalgia regress. Would a quill or reed pen be even better?\u00a0 Should the \u201cauthentic\u201d writer make his or her own paper?\u00a0 Rather, the value of calling attention to the core issue over which Nietzsche and Heidegger diverge is that it allows us to emphasize a crucial point of commonality<\/em>.\u00a0 Both philosophers agree that material culture can have a profound influence upon thought and, thereby, upon the kind of subject who thinks in particular way.<\/p>\n

Kittler further stresses the fact that typed texts display a different visual configuration than handwritten ones.\u00a0 Unlike handwritten documents, typed manuscripts distribute spatially discrete signs of standardized size.\u00a0 Such uniformity could appeal to Nietzsche precisely because it fused what Marshal McLuhan<\/a> calls \u201ccomposition and publication.\u201d It enabled \u201ca half-blind writer chased by publishers\u2026to produce \u2018documents as beautiful and standardized as print.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, and most significantly, Kittler makes the following rather startling claim about Nietzsche\u2019s response:<\/p>\n

Nietzsche, as proud of the publication of his mechanization as any philosopher, changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.\u00a0 That is precisely what is meant by the sentence our writing tools are also working on our thoughts.\u00a0 Malling Hansen\u2019s writing ball, with its operating difficulties, made Nietzsche into a laconic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kittler\u2019s point, then, is that when Nietzsche challenged conventional modes of philosophical expression, he didn\u2019t opt for epigraphs simply because he believed the style would dramatically impact readers\u2014more so than, say, lengthy texts comprised of logically arranged propositions.\u00a0 Rather, Nietzsche\u2019s decision to \u201cartistically\u201d confront the problem of communication emerged from a combination factors: his views on language, the physical limitations imposed by his ailments, and the horizon of possibilities that the typewriter affords. \u00a0Given the importance of all three, Kittler cites a poem that Nietzsche wrote about the Malling Hansen in 1882.\u00a0 Translated, it states:<\/p>\n

THE WRITING BALL IS A THING LIKE ME: MADE OF \/IRON\/ YET EASILY TWISTED ON JOURNEYS.\/ PATIENCE AND TACT ARE REQUIRED IN ADBUNDANCE,\/ AS WELL AS FINE FINGERS, TO USE US.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By comparing \u201cthe equipment, the thing, and the agent,\u201d Nietzsche appears to demonstrate his awareness that \u201cauthors\u201d do not generate thoughts that transcend their material culture.<\/p>\n

Obviously, much has changed since Nietzsche wrote with a typewriter.\u00a0 That technology largely has faded from practice, and for the most part, become a relic replaced by various forms of computer-mediated programs.\u00a0 Nevertheless, the manner in which the typewriter impacts cognition is paralleled by changes brought upon by current digital writing tools.<\/p>\n

Michael Chabon<\/a>, for example, listed software (DevonThink Pro and Nisus Writer Express) in the acknowledgement section to his highly acclaimed novel, The Yiddish Policeman\u2019s Union<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 If the instrumentalist view of technology were correct, this attribution should strike us as absurd.\u00a0 According to the instrumentalist outlook, people can be good or bad collaborators.\u00a0 Pen, paper, typewriters, and computers are merely artifacts that good writers use well, and bad writers use poorly.\u00a0 Indeed, for the instrumentalist, it is bad faith<\/a> to associate the quality of writing with its underlying material culture; an artist in denial blames his or her tools to avoid the painful realization that he or she lacks talent.\u00a0 And yet, Chabon isn\u2019t blaming a dry spell or a poor novel on his tools.\u00a0 Remarkably, he is doing the opposite.\u00a0 Instead of taking all the credit for his accomplishment, he\u2019s challenging perceptions of autonomy by distributing its value to a human-machine interface.<\/p>\n

The significance of Chabon\u2019s comments\u2014and Kittler and Heidegger\u2019s analyses\u2014extends beyond the topic of writers and their tools. To grasp the effects of computers have on society, we need to carefully reflect on the distortions that arise when the instrumentalist perspective pervades coverage of social media. The go-to phrase, \u201cthe Web is just a tool\u201d is as off-base as the NRA slogan, \u201cGuns don\u2019t kill people. People kill people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evan Selinger is an associate professor of philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology. Follow him on Twitter: @evanselinger<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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