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中文计算机：信息时代的全球史

基本信息

Thomas S. Mullaney, The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2024.

本书与作者简介

About this book

The fascinating, untold story of how the Chinese language overcame unparalleled challenges and revolutionized the world of computing.

A standard QWERTY keyboard has a few dozen keys. How can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on such a device? In The Chinese Computer, Thomas S. Mullaney sets out to resolve this paradox, and in doing so, discovers that the key to this seemingly impossible riddle has given rise to a new epoch in the history of writing—a form of writing he calls “hypography.” Based on fifteen years of research, this pathbreaking history of the Chinese language charts the beginnings of electronic Chinese technology in the wake of World War II up through to its many iterations in the present day.

Mullaney takes the reader back through the history and evolution of Chinese language computing technology, showing the development of electronic Chinese input methods—software programs that enable Chinese characters to be produced using alphanumeric symbols—and the profound impact they have had on the way Chinese is written. Along the way, Mullaney introduces a cast of brilliant and eccentric personalities drawn from the ranks of IBM, MIT, the CIA, the Pentagon, the Taiwanese military, and the highest rungs of mainland Chinese establishment, to name a few, and the unexpected roles they played in developing Chinese language computing. Finally, he shows how China and the non-Western world—because of the hypographic technologies they had to invent in order to join the personal computing revolution—“saved” the Western computer from its deep biases, enabling it to achieve a meaningful presence in markets outside of the Americas and Europe.

An eminently engaging and artfully told history, The Chinese Computer is a must-read for anyone interested in how culture informs computing and how computing, in turn, shapes culture.

关于本书

这是一个引人入胜却鲜为人知的故事，讲述了中文是如何克服前所未有的挑战，革新计算世界的。

一个标准的QWERTY键盘只有几十个键。中文有成千上万个字符，没有字母表，如何在这样一个设备上输入?在《中文计算机》一书中，托马斯·S·穆拉尼着手解开这个悖论，并在此过程中发现，这个看似不可能的谜题的关键引发了书写历史上一个新时代——他称之为“超文字”的书写形式。基于15年的研究，这部开创性的中文历史著作描绘了二战后电子中文技术的起源，一直到现在的多次迭代。

穆拉尼带领读者回顾了中文计算技术的历史和演变，展示了电子中文输入法(使用字母数字符号生成汉字的软件程序)的发展，以及它们对中文书写方式产生的深远影响。在这一过程中，穆拉尼介绍了一群才华横溢、性格古怪的人物，他们分别来自IBM、麻省理工学院、中情局、五角大楼、台湾军方和中国大陆最高层，并在发展中文计算方面扮演了意想不到的角色。最后，他展示了中国和非西方世界是如何——因为他们不得不发明超文字技术以加入个人计算革命——“拯救”了西方计算机，使其摆脱了深层偏见，在美洲和欧洲以外的市场获得了有意义的地位。

《中文计算机》是一部引人入胜、叙事精彩的历史著作，对于任何对文化如何影响计算，以及计算如何反过来塑造文化感兴趣的人来说，都是必读之作。

About the author

Thomas S. Mullaney is Professor of Chinese History at Stanford University and a Guggenheim Fellow. He is the author of The Chinese Typewriter: A History, Where Research Begins, and Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China.

关于作者

托马斯·S·穆拉尼是斯坦福大学中国历史教授,古根海姆奖学金获得者。他是《中文打字机：一部历史》、《研究始于何处》和《与国家达成共识：现代中国的民族分类》的作者。