Thomas S Mullaney
Biographic Data
| ID | 1253897 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas S Mullaney |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas S |
| FAMILY NAME | Mullaney |
| SIGNATURE | MULLANEY T S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stanford University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0540-1423 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 94 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Your Computer Is on Fire
Techno-utopianism is dead: Now is the time to pay attention to the inequality, marginalization, and biases woven into our technological systems. This book sounds an alarm: after decades of being lulled into complacency by narratives of technological utopianism and neutrality, people are waking up to the large-scale consequences of Silicon Valley–led technophilia. This book trains a spotlight on the inequality, marginalization, and biases in our t…
Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China
China is a vast nation comprised of hundreds of distinct ethnic communities, each with its own language, history, and culture. Today the government of China recognizes just 56 ethnic nationalities, or minzu, as groups entitled to representation. This controversial new book recounts the history of the most sweeping attempt to sort and categorize the nation's enormous population: the 1954 Ethnic Classification project ( minzu shibie ). Thomas S. Mu…
Shift CTRL: Computing and New Media as Global, Cultural, Sociopolitical, and Ecological
Shift CTRLComputing and New Media as Global, Cultural, Sociopolitical, and Ecological Thomas S. Mullaney (bio) We are living in a golden age for the study of information and language technologies in the modern period, and perhaps even more so for the study of computing and new media. Sustained by enduring engagements with Book History, Actor-Network-Theory, the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) program, and Science, Technology, and Society…
QWERTY in China: Chinese Computing and the Radical Alphabet
Since the late 1980s, computers throughout the Sinophone world have featured QWERTY keyboards, employing input techniques that rely upon the Latin alphabet. In this article, I argue that historians of modern China and modern information technology alike have profoundly misunderstood China's QWERTY keyboard and oversimplified the history of China's engagement with the Latin alphabet during the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Sch…
Controlling the Kanjisphere: The Rise of the Sino-Japanese Typewriter and the Birth of CJK
Japan has been home to two distinct approaches to typewriting, the first oriented exclusively towards the typing ofkanaand the second oriented towardskanji. In look and feel, this first family of machines was indistinguishable from those built by Remington, Underwood, or Olivetti. The second, however, was indistinguishable from typewriters already being produced in China: tray bed machines featuring approximately 2,500 of the most commonly used c…
Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation, and Identity of China's Majority
Addressing the problem of the ‘Han’ ethnos from a variety of relevant perspectives—historical, geographical, racial, political, literary, anthropological, and linguistic—Critical Han Studies offers a responsible, informative deconstruction of this monumental yet murky category. It is certain to have an enormous impact on the entire field of China studies.” Victor H. Mair, University of Pennsylvania“This deeply historical, multidisciplinary volume…
The Moveable Typewriter: How Chinese Typists Developed Predictive Text during the Height of Maoism
The Moveable TypewriterHow Chinese Typists Developed Predictive Text during the Height of Maoism Thomas S. Mullaney (bio) In November 1956 a typist in the central Chinese city of Luoyang accomplished an astonishing feat. Using a mechanical Chinese typewriter, the operator typed 4,730 characters in one hour, setting a new record just shy of eighty characters per minute.1 While seemingly unremarkable when considered within the more familiar context…
Seeing for the state: The role of social scientists in China's ethnic classification project
This article proposes a new understanding of the Ethnic Classification project (minzu shibie) undertaken in China's southwesternmost province of Yunnan in 1954 – a project in which social scientists and Communist Party cadres set out to determine which of the dozens, if not hundreds, of minority communities in the province would be officially recognized by the state. Specifically, this article argues that ethnologists and linguists played a far g…
Ethnic Classification Writ Large: The 1954 Yunnan Province Ethnic Classification Project and its Foundations in Republican-Era Taxonomic Thought
Like other forms of state-led demographic enterprises, the PRC-era Ethnic Classification Project, or minzu shibie, was an inventive process of social engineering, not simply an attempt at neutrally reflecting primordial qualities of the non-Han social sphere. The engineering of the categories depended upon three main factors. First, it required a particular form of taxonomic enthusiasm - a "will to classify" - committed to the division of the non…
Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China
China is a vast nation comprised of hundreds of distinct ethnic communities, each with its own language, history, and culture. Today the government of China recognizes just 56 ethnic nationalities, or minzu, as groups entitled to representation. This controversial new book recounts the history of the most sweeping attempt to sort and categorize the nation's enormous population: the 1954 Ethnic Classification project ( minzu shibie ). Thomas S. Mu…
Ethnic Classification Writ Large: The 1954 Yunnan Province Ethnic Classification Project and its Foundations in Republican-Era Taxonomic Thought
Like other forms of state-led demographic enterprises, the PRC-era Ethnic Classification Project, or minzu shibie, was an inventive process of social engineering, not simply an attempt at neutrally reflecting primordial qualities of the non-Han social sphere. The engineering of the categories depended upon three main factors. First, it required a particular form of taxonomic enthusiasm - a "will to classify" - committed to the division of the non…
Seeing for the state: The role of social scientists in China's ethnic classification project
This article proposes a new understanding of the Ethnic Classification project (minzu shibie) undertaken in China's southwesternmost province of Yunnan in 1954 – a project in which social scientists and Communist Party cadres set out to determine which of the dozens, if not hundreds, of minority communities in the province would be officially recognized by the state. Specifically, this article argues that ethnologists and linguists played a far g…
The Moveable Typewriter: How Chinese Typists Developed Predictive Text during the Height of Maoism
The Moveable TypewriterHow Chinese Typists Developed Predictive Text during the Height of Maoism Thomas S. Mullaney (bio) In November 1956 a typist in the central Chinese city of Luoyang accomplished an astonishing feat. Using a mechanical Chinese typewriter, the operator typed 4,730 characters in one hour, setting a new record just shy of eighty characters per minute.1 While seemingly unremarkable when considered within the more familiar context…
Controlling the Kanjisphere: The Rise of the Sino-Japanese Typewriter and the Birth of CJK
Japan has been home to two distinct approaches to typewriting, the first oriented exclusively towards the typing ofkanaand the second oriented towardskanji. In look and feel, this first family of machines was indistinguishable from those built by Remington, Underwood, or Olivetti. The second, however, was indistinguishable from typewriters already being produced in China: tray bed machines featuring approximately 2,500 of the most commonly used c…
Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation, and Identity of China's Majority
Addressing the problem of the ‘Han’ ethnos from a variety of relevant perspectives—historical, geographical, racial, political, literary, anthropological, and linguistic—Critical Han Studies offers a responsible, informative deconstruction of this monumental yet murky category. It is certain to have an enormous impact on the entire field of China studies.” Victor H. Mair, University of Pennsylvania“This deeply historical, multidisciplinary volume…
Ethnic Classification Writ Large: The 1954 Yunnan Province Ethnic Classification Project and its Foundations in Republican-Era Taxonomic Thought
Like other forms of state-led demographic enterprises, the PRC-era Ethnic Classification Project, or minzu shibie, was an inventive process of social engineering, not simply an attempt at neutrally reflecting primordial qualities of the non-Han social sphere. The engineering of the categories depended upon three main factors. First, it required a particular form of taxonomic enthusiasm - a "will to classify" - committed to the division of the non…
Seeing for the state: The role of social scientists in China's ethnic classification project
This article proposes a new understanding of the Ethnic Classification project (minzu shibie) undertaken in China's southwesternmost province of Yunnan in 1954 – a project in which social scientists and Communist Party cadres set out to determine which of the dozens, if not hundreds, of minority communities in the province would be officially recognized by the state. Specifically, this article argues that ethnologists and linguists played a far g…
Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation, and Identity of China's Majority
Addressing the problem of the ‘Han’ ethnos from a variety of relevant perspectives—historical, geographical, racial, political, literary, anthropological, and linguistic—Critical Han Studies offers a responsible, informative deconstruction of this monumental yet murky category. It is certain to have an enormous impact on the entire field of China studies.” Victor H. Mair, University of Pennsylvania“This deeply historical, multidisciplinary volume…
The Moveable Typewriter: How Chinese Typists Developed Predictive Text during the Height of Maoism
The Moveable TypewriterHow Chinese Typists Developed Predictive Text during the Height of Maoism Thomas S. Mullaney (bio) In November 1956 a typist in the central Chinese city of Luoyang accomplished an astonishing feat. Using a mechanical Chinese typewriter, the operator typed 4,730 characters in one hour, setting a new record just shy of eighty characters per minute.1 While seemingly unremarkable when considered within the more familiar context…
Controlling the Kanjisphere: The Rise of the Sino-Japanese Typewriter and the Birth of CJK
Japan has been home to two distinct approaches to typewriting, the first oriented exclusively towards the typing ofkanaand the second oriented towardskanji. In look and feel, this first family of machines was indistinguishable from those built by Remington, Underwood, or Olivetti. The second, however, was indistinguishable from typewriters already being produced in China: tray bed machines featuring approximately 2,500 of the most commonly used c…
Shift CTRL: Computing and New Media as Global, Cultural, Sociopolitical, and Ecological
Shift CTRLComputing and New Media as Global, Cultural, Sociopolitical, and Ecological Thomas S. Mullaney (bio) We are living in a golden age for the study of information and language technologies in the modern period, and perhaps even more so for the study of computing and new media. Sustained by enduring engagements with Book History, Actor-Network-Theory, the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) program, and Science, Technology, and Society…
QWERTY in China: Chinese Computing and the Radical Alphabet
Since the late 1980s, computers throughout the Sinophone world have featured QWERTY keyboards, employing input techniques that rely upon the Latin alphabet. In this article, I argue that historians of modern China and modern information technology alike have profoundly misunderstood China's QWERTY keyboard and oversimplified the history of China's engagement with the Latin alphabet during the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Sch…
Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China
China is a vast nation comprised of hundreds of distinct ethnic communities, each with its own language, history, and culture. Today the government of China recognizes just 56 ethnic nationalities, or minzu, as groups entitled to representation. This controversial new book recounts the history of the most sweeping attempt to sort and categorize the nation's enormous population: the 1954 Ethnic Classification project ( minzu shibie ). Thomas S. Mu…
Your Computer Is on Fire
Techno-utopianism is dead: Now is the time to pay attention to the inequality, marginalization, and biases woven into our technological systems. This book sounds an alarm: after decades of being lulled into complacency by narratives of technological utopianism and neutrality, people are waking up to the large-scale consequences of Silicon Valley–led technophilia. This book trains a spotlight on the inequality, marginalization, and biases in our t…
Sociology (7 works) · China (6 works) · History (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Artificial Intelligence (3 works)