The Phenomenology of Writing: Handwriting to Typewriting
Introduction
This video documentary looks at the phenomenology of writing. More specifically, how and why writing progressed from handwriting to typewriting, and the implications and effects it had on reading, writing, and education in general.
I chose to use iMovie because I am familiar with the program and at the time I started this assignment, my students were also working on iMovie projects, so they helped me with some of the editing and answered any of my questions. The main difficulty I found was finding images that were creative commons licensed. There were so many pictures and video clips that I wanted to insert, but did not have the right permissions.
The Phenomenology of Writing Script
Congratulations on a detailed documentary about phenomonology. The stand outs for me were the points made about the differences between hand writing and typewriting, especially the importance or unimportance of being able to see what we write. Also the ‘detachment’ in typewriting (McLuhan). Today, we have a space where our fingers work (keyboard), and a space where our text production appears (screen), and we think nothing of the distance. It must have seemed odd when typewriting first began.
I hope it’s OK to check with you about one bit of the video where you discuss careers of women. The audio says ‘women of the late 19th century’, but I saw a picture of women from the 20th century (prob about the ’50s). Later, there is a black & white pic of a women using a typewriter, and that looks to be from a period that might be late 19th century. It jumped out at me when the audio said 19th century but the pic was 20th century.
Hi Janette,
Good point about the pictures. There were so many images I would have liked to use, but it was really hard to find images that fit within the creative commons licensing, so I kind of had to take whatever I could find. That is why the picture is from the 20th century but the audio says 19th.
Kara
Great video. I liked how you used the sound of a typewriter or the pencil against the paper for the background sound rather than using music. It really helped place your mindset into the technology. I also found it interesting how the history of the word secret-ary came about and details on student learning and attitude from a study on the students typing versus those who did not type. I wonder if those same effects are seen on students who type on a computer or is it specific to the typewriter. I also found that one of my challenged in the documentary was the images, in particular, referencing them. A lot of them did not have any authors and required a little searching to find more information on them. Great work.