MDIA 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Austria-Hungary, Quills, Word Processor
22 Dec 2016
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Document Summary
For most of history people have used their hands to write. A divide occurs in the 19th century when people stop using their hands when they write. The typewriter is invented and writing becomes standardized, mechanized and industrialized. Computers/keyboards are a direct descendant of the typewriter. You"re no longer the master of your writing - typos. People think differently when they type versus writing by hand. Egyptians first used the papyrus plant to write on. The use of papyrus makes written documents mobile, they can easily be transported and organized in collections (archives and libraries). But there is a trade-off: light-weight mobile materials such as papyrus are more prone to deterioration, can more easily be tampered with. An example of the ephemeral nature of papyrus is the destruction of the famous library of alexandria, a center of ancient scholarship and location of a wealth of writings of ancient egypt and greece.
