Humming away in offices on Capitol Hill, in the Pentagon and in the White House is a technology that represents the pragmatism, efficiency and unsentimental nature of American bureaucracy: the autopen. It is a device that stores a person’s signature, replicating it as needed using a mechanical arm that holds a real pen.
Like many technologies, this rudimentary robotic signature-maker has always provoked ambivalence. We invest signatures with meaning, particularly when the signer is well known. During the George W Bush administration, the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, generated a small wave of outrage when reporters revealed that he had been using an autopen for his signature on the condolence letters that he sent to the families of fallen soldiers.
Fans of singer Bob Dylan expressed ire when they discovered that the limited edition of his book The Philosophy of Modern Song, which cost nearly $600 and came with an official certificate “attesting to its having been individually signed by Dylan”, in fact had made unlimited use of an autopen. Dylan took the unusual step of issuing a statement on his Facebook page: “With contractual deadlines looming,” Dylan wrote, “the idea of using an autopen was suggested to me, along with the assurance that this kind of thing is done ‘all the time’ in the art and literary worlds.” He also acknowledged that: “Using a machine was an error in judgment and I want to rectify it immediately.”
Our mixed feelings about machine-made signatures make plain our broader relationship to handwriting: it offers a glimpse of individuality. Any time spent doing archival research is a humbling lesson in the challenges and rewards of deciphering the handwritten word. You come to know your long-dead subjects through the quirks of their handwriting; one man’s script becomes spidery and small when he writes something emotionally charged, while another’s pristine pages suggest the diligence of a medieval monk. The calligraphist Bernard Maisner argues that calligraphy, and handwriting more broadly, is “not meant to reproduce something over and over again. It’s meant to show the humanity, the responsiveness and variation within.”
Thx for sharing.
There is something sad for me to be reading this article while I’m making a break from my usual work, having a quick look at the pen that is resting on top of the sheets of scribbled reading notes I’ve been taking for the last few days while I’m working my way through Rousseau’s Emile, ou de l’éducation (Emile, or On Education for the few non-French speakers out there ;)).
For me, that’s the real sad part. So sad.
More and more often, even though I’m no teacher and don’t meet that much young people, I can see and hear their baffled reactions when they watch me take handwritten notes, or when they discover I’m always taking notes while I’m reading, or when they learn that I draft almost everything I write longhand—like some caveman, save that cavemen back then did not write even if some of them painted.
They sincerely don’t understand why anyone would not want to use the speedier keyboard, when they’re not surprised one may want to write anything at all. They also don’t understand why anyone would want to use such an impractical mean of storing thoughts and sharing them (my handwriting is shit, even I can have a hard time reading it). And I can’t blame them. Why would I?
Most of them have never experienced first hand how handwriting very slowness is key and how its uniqueness (my shitty handwriting, or the much nicer handwriting of my spouse) make it such an efficient way to internalize thoughts, notes, ideas, lists and have them ingrained in our brains… in our personality. And a unique way to share them, too.
I’m a decent typist, I can use many type of keyboard in a few various layouts without much need to look at them, but I would not exchange my fancy fountain pen or even my cheap ballpoint Bic pen for any keyboard when it’s time to take notes, to put down some thoughts and draft something. The keyboard is best for finalizing a text as far as I’m concerned, not so much before that.
The grumpy old man in me is tempted to say ‘Maybe it’s that type of education that needs to go out, and quick?’ but I won’t say that.
Instead, I would suggest we question the purpose of educating kids. Why waste so many effing years of their life on school benches? What is it supposed to make out of them or help them make out of themselves? Very optimized and very performant parts of some gigantic machinery that constantly needs new (but highly standardized) cogs to keep working? Or do we wish to help them become the individuals they can be, each with their own personality and, yeah, sometimes also with their own shitty handwriting? But like I mentioned, it’s most probably just grumpy-old-me that’s, well, old and grumpy and doesn’t understand the time we’re living in and how bright and happy the future of those kids is looking like— rejoice child, you won’t have to learn cursive.
My coffee has gone cold. The conclusion is obvious: too much of me ranting, time to go back to my (paper!) book, and that stack of sheets, and to my stupid pen ;)
edit: typos + clarifications.