Cursive Writing’s Long Coming Demise

If you think that the computer killed “Cursive Writing”, think again. 111 years ago, the invention of the typewriter did that.

The State of Indiana has recommended that “cursive” writing, or as we used to call it “penmanship” be eliminated from school curriculums state wide. In its place would be instruction on keyboarding, which of course is how you access a computer.
Many people are sad about this, me not being one of them. After having many marks on my grade cards of “bad penmanship”, or ” needs to be more careful with writing” notes at the bottom, I quite frankly think this ruling is about 40 years too late.
But lets look at why we in American education have had to put up with this waste of our precious time, the idea that there was a certain design and script that a letter had to look like, always written on lined paper, with guides in the middle.
The art of writing, and yes it is an art, was inherited from the ancients. Babylonian cuneiform was the earliest known writing, which came from the middle east. The Phoenicians and the Greeks added their influence to this art, which initially was used for business and legal matters. Storytelling was still done the old fashioned way: Orally.
For storytelling writing was nothing more than note taking, to be later read aloud. The writing was not meant for mass audiences, since very few in ancient society could read. Mass transmission was done by speaking. Writing was, up until almost the 14th century, just a way to hold information until it could be used orally. Writing supported the oral tradition.
By the time the English language appeared on the scene, writing was an art that was enhanced by Augustinian scholars, illuminated by gold leaf, and romanticized by bards. Next came the technological breakthrough of the printing press. This allowed the masses to learn reading skills. However, more of the populace could read than could write.
At this point however, there was still a need for what was known as “good hand”, the need for legible writing that could be transfered to a printer and then be mass produced. Interesting also how many texts were changed by these printers because of illegibility, or the lack of particular type ( the strange use of the lower case “f” in the place of the elegant looking lower case “s” was said to be first done by a printer who had more of the “f” and not enough “s”).
The next technology to change the face of writing would be the typewriter. This actually was the point where hand writing “long hand” became an anachronism.
Writing was rendered via “short” hand, the ability to write quickly and then either type on the new device, and then easily transfer the text to a printer who would set the type for mass production.
In the 1870s, up till the 20th century, “Good Hand” was still the standard on which many legal documents were based on. Writing in a “cursive” style was still used for major governmental documents, and also for personal communication.
Another technology that entered the scene was the telegraph, which took the standard lettering of text and converted it to sound, making the need for aural interpretation, and quick note taking an imperative.

With the advent of the 21st century we see the demise of the basis of writing technologies; the press replaced by the laser printer, the typewriter by the word processor, and the telegraph by wireless communication and internet.
It is now cursive penmanship’s turn to walk the plank.

The reason that so many were subjected to penmanship has an economic base to it, despite the fact that it originally was an artist’s place to perform it. But cursive itself, has been dead for years, replaced by short hand and italics.
There is a real need in today’s world to be able to use a keyboard. Writing long hand takes enormous amounts of time, and is not easily edited. The fact of the matter is , most of those under the age of 30 rarely if ever use cursive writing, or paper for that matter.

A “good hand” is most hard to find these days. It is an art with symmetry and beauty all its own. I note there are artists that use computer mediation to make new fonts and type families that are geared for viewing on electronic monitors. These artists ply their typography skills as artists, so even by using de-humanizing technology, art is still a real part of the writing trade.

There are those who will still say that a hand written note is much more personal, and desirable to receive. It would have to be a pretty good hand to impress me, since I cannot read half of what people are saying with cursive anyway. I am certain that they cannot read mine, which is why almost all my notes are in italics. I do however break out my cursive for birthday cards and well wished notes. My writing of “Good Luck” with cursive has a tendency to look like the wish of a very happy sexual encounter when I finish. I think most people can do without my encouragement for that. I will type it from now on. Good Luck.

Before Twit Pics We Had The Polaroid

I always dislike articles that start out with the words “Back in the day..”, because I know we are going to hear a slanted story about drinking from a garden hose and staying out until the street lights came on. That was all BS. Garden hose water tastes like plastic and always has. If I was not in before dusk, the mosquitoes were my best friends, so I went inside. But, for entertainment, I did read a bit, and I was an amateur photographer.
Dad would not let me use his photo equipment until I was an adult. So I had my own. I had a cheap 35 mm with a fixed 30mm lens, and several medium format cameras, an old Kodak Brownie (it was actually blue) and my prize, a Polaroid Swinger.
Now the Polaroid I rarely used, since the film was very expensive.(it was like 2 bucks for twelve shots) but was great for candid shots of my mother in curlers ( I was chased through the house for that one) and of course me and my friends clandestinely running naked.
We never thought of ourselves as nudists, and I wont speculate on what kind of homoeroticism was going on, but be it safe to say that we thought it was fun.
Back then, if you were to take film with nude photos on it to the local camera shop, most times they would not make prints of the offending photos. So you were left with making your own prints (Dad would have killed me if I used his dark room equipment for that) or sending the film off by mail, and three weeks later you would get the prints back, usually with the naked ones on top to show they had looked at them.(Mother picked up the mail before I got home from school, that would have been suicidal for me).
So the secret lives we all thought we led were documented on the little Polaroid camera.
Of course, when girls would take the same Polaroid pictures, and we got hold of them, we would pass them around like stone tablets and stare in awe at the improperly lit and blurry visage, that might, or might not be a breast and nipple.
Public views however could be more disturbing. Just after the birth of my oldest daughter, my wife and I were walking the street of our small Indiana town and on the street corner near the local drugstore we saw a Polaroid picture laying on the ground. A man had taken a picture of his erect penis, and his red tennis shoes below, and left the picture at the door of the drug store. My wife of course was shocked. I was amazed that his member and his shoes were the same size. But this was how technology was used back in the day…shit…sorry…in years past.
Technology and scandal are never far apart. If atomic energy could give us visions of naked people, there would be a reactor on every block. Along with that would be moralists decrying the decent of our society into decadence. Technology is a force for good, and in the wrong hands a force for destruction. In Africa, smart phones are being used to take photos and videos of people who are ill, and sent back to physicians in Europe to help diagnose the problems. Photo imaging has given the world a wonderful ability to see things that we would never have been able to describe, and transmit them thousands of miles. Photo imaging of all kinds is a good thing. On top of that, almost everybody loves taking naked pictures. So blame the operator, not the operation. Lets not be afraid of alchemy like the medieval were. Gold can be made, where lead used to be.

Aging Humanity and Technology: Our Politics and Breaking Habits.

A recent New York Times article says that by the year 2016 there will be more individuals in the United States over the age of 65, than there will be under the age of five. The World is getting old. This is the reality that we face as a nation, and as a world. Despite all the jingoistic rhetoric about third world non-Christian countries taking over in population size, as a world we have slowed down our new population growth. In the distant past, famine, war, plague and natural disaster took its toll on our populations. However this is not the case anymore. Sure, there are disasters, hostilities and disease outbreaks. However as a world, we now respond to those afflicted areas with scientific knowledge, the ability to travel long distances, communication links and human specialists in these type events at a moments notice. So how is it that population growth is stymied? It isn’t really. The population of middle age and older is steadily growing.

In the 1960s, 1/3rd of the United States population was under the age of 30. In 2005 over half of the population of Ireland was under 30. Today, as we see Middle and Far Eastern countries, the population is almost 50/50, with populations 30 and under, 50 and over. This is building into a world population that is going to be really old, and at the same time moderately young.
What has caused this split in populations? We lay the reasons for these phenomena at the feet of empirical scientific research and the subsequent development and use of new life extending technologies. What place does technology play in all this?
Technology has helped to solve the two main causes of mortality in the world; disease and war.
Disease was tamed by the spread of scientific breakthroughs and practices. War, at least large spectacular horrific ones like World Wars II and I have been curtailed by the spectacle of the atom bomb. Mutual destruction is a deterrent for sure. Atomic catastrophe has shown that religious fanaticism should not reach the total assurance that after an Armageddon, there will be a time of sincere prosperity. The specter of annihilation is still a ghastly one, and it haunts the rational and irrational mind alike. Thank goodness the few that espouse a total destruction of society are kept in check by the vigilant many. Shocking events such as 9/11 and European bombing tragedies in Spain and the UK should make those that guard against such travesties even more vigilant. That is my hope anyway.

Since it is technology that has enabled the world to eradicate disease, and in some respects curtail warlike tendencies, what will technology do to help mediate the growing older of our populations? What can it also do to help enable those in the prime of their life deal with the generations that are still with us?
Technology is no replacement for a concerned humanism. The idea that we all are going to be older should make those that come before quite concerned about those that come after. They will be our caretakers, particularly if we can’t do it ourselves.

We all want to live to be old. You can re-define age if you want to from a narcissistic point of view, but aging is a sign of a successful society. The aged used to be sought out as a source of strength, partially because if you lived to be old, you must have done something right. Disease and war didn’t get you, and obviously you had enough to eat. That was unusual in some areas. But the aged started to change. Because started to value all humanity, not just particular groups and backgrounds, we brought about changes that left us with large numbers of people who centuries before, would have not lived that long. The physicist Stephen Hawking is just one example. The natural selection and eugenics crowd lost to science and morality. Not just religious moralism, but humanism. Humanism brought forth not just by Luther and Kierkegaard, but also by Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Ghandi and Martin Luther King.

We have been affected by this humanism. It is ingrained in our religious values now thanks to the progressives in all religions. It has been a constant battle however. The Abbasid Caliphate centered in ancient Baghdad was the center for a thriving humanistic outreach to the Muslim world at the time. Their saying was “that ‘the ink of a scholar is more holy than the blood of a martyr’ stressing the value of knowledge”. This was before the Crusades, where religious influences accentuated myth over humanity. It has taken centuries to get to the point within the Middle East where the younger generation can see the promise of a world with respect and humanity as its core.

Interesting that in the last few weeks the old ways of doing things has intervened. Warriors did the job that the bards and humanists couldn’t get finished. Osama Bin Laden is gone, and we found out about it from a Pakistani student who was using Twitter. We have seen that good and decent people live sometimes in the presence of archaic mysticism. Technology is bringing the humanists together.

In the ensuing backlash, we get to see that technology can bind us. Technology is not here to make us conform to some standardized techno-controlled future. It is here to make us connect and realize the humanity on each end. It might take another generation, but the new citizens will have to deal with the old ones first. The malleable and the habitual will be living together. We older ones should be shaking in our boots.
Lets hope that the technology will allow us to bend to the needs of the many over the views of the few, because I’m betting humanity will win one way or other.