De-Writing
The misuse of writing
Margot Mellet - 21 juin 2024
Wie wir alle wissen und nur nicht sagen, schreibt kein Mensch mehr.
(Kittler, 1993)
As one knows without saying, nobody writes anymore.
(Friedrich Kittler)
Modern loss of grasp
Si nous n’écrivons plus, c’est parce que les médias techniques, à partir du XIXe siècle,
ont pu capter du réel des données qui échappent à la perception humaine : le gramophone
enregistrait des oscillations non perceptibles à l’oreille humaine, la machine à écrire,
augmentant la vitesse d’écriture, permettait d’automatiser le geste d’écriture [...],
les circuits intégrés de l’ordinateur traitent les données plus rapidement que n’importe
lequel ou laquelle des calculateurs et calculatrices humains employés jusqu’à la fin de
la Seconde Guerre mondiale.
(Guez et Vargoz 2017)
If we no longer write, it's because the technical media, from the 19th century onwards,
have been able to capture data from reality that escapes human perception: the
gramophone recorded oscillations not perceptible to the human ear; the typewriter, by
increasing writing speed, made it possible to automate the writing gesture [...]; the
computer's electronic circuits process data faster than any of the human computers
working until the end of the Second World War.
(Guez and Vargoz)
Digital loss of hard(ware)
Schriften und Texte [...] existieren mithin nich mehr in wahrnehmbaren Zeiten und
Räumer, sondern in den Transistorzellen von Computern. [...]
Heute [...] läuft menschliches Schreiben durch Inschriften, die nicht nur mittels
Elektronenlithographie in Silizium eingebrannt, sondern im Unterschied zu allen
Schreibwerkzeugen der Geschichte auch imstande sind, selber zu lesen und zu schreiben.
(Kittler, 1993)
Writing and texts [...] therefore no longer exist in perceptible times and spaces, but in the transistor characterised cells of computers. Today [...] human writing is done by inscriptions that are not only engraved in silicium by means of electron lithography but, unlike all writing tools in history, are also capable of reading and writing themselves.
I can’t imagine that students today would learn only to read and write using the twenty-six letters
of the alphabet. They should at least know some arithmetic, the integral function, the sine
function, everything about signs and functions. They should also know at least two software
languages.
(Kittler 1996)
Who never wrote a poem is not a teacher
Once I met a young professor of German literature, who addressed me during a lunch break at a
conference. He told me, “Mr. Kittler, you are wrong. You always tell us that in order to understand
the computer age one has to be able to program one’s own computer. This is silly,” he said,
“Computers are like cars. You don’t have to understand the internal mechanics of a car in order to
drive it. Look at me,” he said, “I am a professor of German literature without ever having written a
poem.” And I told him that if this was the case, he was no scholar of German
literature.
(Kittler 2012)