A Response to "The Art of Immemorability"

When I began reading this piece, the thing that I immediately noticed was the many technological words and phrases in the first opening paragraphs. The piece starts out talking about Wired magazine, and its use of "wysiwyg" ("what you see is what you get") definitely caught me off-guard. After I was able to process it though, it did make sense. The article is about technology and writing, so why not use a common internet acronym to help prove your point? It was a wonderful way of blending the concepts of the ancient Greek alphabet and the modern-day forms in which we communicate.

The use of technical (or rather, computer) terms in the article was interesting, yet it did pose a problem for me. I am not a very computer-savvy person (although after viewing my animations I'm sure you realize that!), and I had no idea what the author was saying when he talked about DOS, Fortran, or the Apple slogans. The jumping back and forth between ancient concepts and modern made the article difficult for me to read.

This reading suggested several reasons why one would want to experiment with the shape of writing. One of the most important reasons was in the example the author provided with the Chinese characters. The Chinese language has hundreds of characters that convey ideas and words, rather than individual letters that compose sounds. This poses a problem in the age of computers and internet. It is difficult for the Chinese language to adapt to a Western-styled computer keyboard. Many alphabets and words of languages around the world are more phonetic-based, and placing individual letters on a keyboard is quite simple. Character-based written languages have difficulty adapting to this, and that might suggest a reason for experimenting with the shape of the writing.

Another, and quite possibly obvious, reason that one would want to experiment with the shape of writing is simply that it opens up more possibilities for expression. Hand-written words are an option for writing, and at one point in time that was all that was available. Today, not only do we have that option, but there are also typewriters and computers and many other ways that writing has expanded. We are not limited to one form or another in writing because of experimentation.

One other reason that one might want to experiment with the shape of writing is because of the possibility that it could to lead to ease of transmission of information from one source to another. At one time in history, the most effective way of communicating written information was the letter. Later, it might have been the newspaper. Today, computers, text messaging, and other technological things help us give information to one another quickly and effectively.

In closing, I enjoyed the reading very much. For my own work, I would like to hold on to the mindeset that just because something may seem obsolete (like using paintings to convey things rather than photographs, which can do the same functions only more easily), it does not mean that that option is dead or gone. It is simply another way of doing things. Don't discount things because they are not as mainstream as they used to be.