Typing vs. Writing:
How the Forms of Thought Shape Our Thinking
If you’re like me, you prefer reading books on paper instead of a screen. You prefer writing your words by hand, perhaps occasionally delving into mechanical typewriters. You enjoy the aesthetic pleasure of putting ink to paper, of turning pages, smelling books and their bindings, making the thinking process a sensory one rather than just an intellectual one.
Chances are, if you felt an affinity for any of the above concepts, you also find the digital age somewhat disconcerting. Looking at a screen is, of course, a far cry from the much more ancient experience of handling pages, pens, or inks.
But if you are also like me, you are not averse to technology seeping its way into every aspect of life, merely wary. I certainly use a computer, and I can easily affirm the efficiency with which it allows me to write. But therein lies the rub.
Lack of efficiency is not a shortcoming of older forms of technology, at least not entirely. Being able to type x amount of words per minute is not a bad thing, but it does allow one to consider how that change in pace affects the words being produces.
If you’ve ever tried to write with a dip pen or quill, which require delicate handling and constant dipping into a pot of ink, you may have found your writing to be different. When you cannot present words as quickly as you can think of them, there is more time to reflect in-between each word.
If a sentence takes twice or four times as long to write by hand as with a keyboard, that’s twice to four times as long for reflection during the process of writing. This is not insignificant. It is reflective of a manner of writing that is not based primarily on efficiency, but more on personality.
When reading someone’s handwriting, it is possible to get a sense of who they are, to what degree they have an organized or disorderly mind, and even how much they enjoy the topic about which they are writing. Graphology offers an entire discipline into the world of handwriting analysis.
As such, the connection the author and the reader have to the text is stronger. A keyboard may indeed be faster, but it cannot put down the same sort of information as one’s own hand. It offers a more personal connection for all parties involved.
All of this is, again, not to condemn technology or espouse becoming a luddite. Rather, it is the foundation of a humble, if also important concern: to what degree do the means by which ideas are produced affect their substance? Does writing by hand not only change the shape of the letters or the medium through which they are viewed, but their content as well?
If typing on a computer allows us to lay thoughts down as quickly as we can think of them, we are — on the whole — left with less time to our individual thoughts than if we were laboriously laying each letter down my hand. We are also deprived of the experience that is writing by hand, seeing one’s words take tangible form.
If one’s ideas only ever exist through pixels on a screen, in some sense at least, they do not really exist. The data of that information exists, but there is no tangible, physical product. And I do not believe this is insignificant.
There is a difference between typing and writing, and not just in terms of the tools being used. Each offers a slightly different way in which to lay out one’s thoughts. And how we lay ideas down does, to my mind, affect what we decide lay down.
The question for me is not whether technology should be hated or loved, but simply questioned. It is best to maintain a deliberately aware disposition, and know why it is one is being used over the other. The self-possessed luddite is no more noble than the aloof technocrat.
At the end of the day, it is a matter of remembering that thoughts are affected by the means through which they are laid down, and that the means of an action do not determine the end for which the act is taken.
