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Hi Paul and everyone<br>
<br>
More a survey of concerns than a historical study, but: <br>
<br>
Daniel Pargman and Jacob Palme, "ASCII imperialism". In Martha
Lampland and Susan Leigh Star (eds.), <i>Standards and their
stories: How quantifying, classifying, and formalizing practices
shape everyday life</i>, pp.177-199. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2009. PDF copy at
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://danielpargman.blogspot.co.uk/p/texts.html"><http://danielpargman.blogspot.co.uk/p/texts.html></a><br>
<br>
(Searching on the term "ASCII imperialism", incidentally, turns up a
1999 text suggesting it was first coined by the Finnish
library/information activist Mikael Böök -- who is himself
uncommonly difficult to search on precisely because of the ASCII
problem...) <br>
<br>
Best<br>
James<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 20/08/2015 16:00, Paul N.Edwards
wrote:<br>
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All, vaguely related to the interesting discussion of race - on
which I tend to agree with Tom H - here’s something that’s been
niggling away at my historical consciousness.
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">In 1993 Jeffrey Shapard published an intriguing
article about the problems created by early standardization on
ASCII 7- and 8-bit character codes for Asian and other
non-alphabetic languages, which can have many thousands of
characters (vs. the 256 representable in 8-bit ASCII). Shapard,
“Islands in the (Data) Stream: Language, Character Codes, and
Electronic Isolation in Japan,” in Linda Harasim, ed., <i
class="">Global networks: Computers and international
communication</i> (MIT Press Cambridge, MA., 1993).
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">This problem carried over into the Web era. It was
technically resolved by Unicode, but that standard has still
not been universally adopted.<br class="">
<br class="">
<div class="">I’m wondering whether any historians have
written about the history of character encoding, especially
Unicode. What I’m curious about is not the technical history
itself, but how the character-code problem affected/was
affected by culture (“electronic isolation," as per Shapard?
indigenous efforts, vs. IBM’s world-market goals?
alternative pathways?). Do any of you know archive- or
interview-based accounts that go into some of the cultural
and social background and implications?</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">NB, there was a 3-part history of IBM's efforts
in Asia, especially kanji representations, in the IEEE
Annals of the History of Computing, Jan.-March 2005,
by: Hensch, K.; Iqi, T.; Iwao, M.; Oda, A.; Takeshita. </div>
<div class="">
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">There are also number of rather thorough and
interesting histories by developer-protagonists and users,
such as these:</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">S. Searle, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/characcodehist.html"
class="">A Brief History of Character Codes in North
America, Europe, and Asia</a></div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">S. Searle, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/unicoderevisited.html"
class="">Unicode Revisited</a></div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">J. Becker, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.unicode.org/history/unicode88.pdf"
class="">Unicode 88</a> (1988 proposal from Xerox PARC)</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Curious for any thoughts or references. </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Best,</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Paul</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
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<div style="font-family: Arial; margin: 0px;"
class="">Paul N. Edwards, Professor of <a
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<div style="font-family: Arial; margin: 0px;"
class="">On sabbatical July-December 2015 —
replies will be slow or nonexistent</div>
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<div style="font-family: Helvetica; margin: 0px;
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class="" face="Geneva">. </font><a
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why! </a><br class="">
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