Imprint And Trace Handwriting In The Age Of Technology

In today's world, written communication is a highly technical business. Most writing is composed on computer, while correspondence is largely transmitted by means of email or text message. We type our shopping orders online, blogs are our diaries and we have Facebook. Consequently, the practice that seems to be falling into neglect as a result is the physical and material act of handwriting. In Imprint and Trace: Handwriting in the Age of Technology, Sonja Neef first uncovers the real historical resilience of handwriting. She shows us how advances in the form of the printing press (a technical means of writing) and the typewriter, for example, initiated in their wake radically new writing implements (steel-tipped feather quill, fountain-pen, ballpoint); and she points out how current digital applications such as tablet PCs, screensavers and handwriting recognition software stimulate new handwriting practices. Behind this intertwined relationship between the physical and the technical are posited paired conceptual principles - trace, the unique cursive line drawn by an individual hand, and imprint, the principle that handwriting needs to be serial, standardized and repeatable in ord