Writing still matters because of the things we can do with it – because of the social and cultural practices that it helps to shape and support. Through the chapters in this book, I have shown how this involves the everyday interactions that consolidate our social networks, the transactions necessary for the smooth running of our complex lives, and the various branches of knowledge that have developed over time. Writing matters because it can be used to label, classify and organize a wide range of resources, materials and activities. It acts as a repository for information and knowledge and as a key source for learning. What better way do we have for finding out about important matters such as coral-bleaching or glacier melt, about the dangerous journeys undertaken by migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, or the persecution of Uyghurs in China? And such matters aren’t just the province of factual writing – both fact and fiction are important, because they help us to reflect on our particular position in the wider sweep of social and cultural life. This is something that fiction can do – although not all fiction does or indeed should do this. For instance, one of the great contributions of the nineteenth-century novel was to create dynamic-localized narratives set in times of widespread social and political change. The familiar interactions and predicaments of day-to-day life were imaginatively reconstructed and tied in with depictions of a changing world; it is no accident that Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is subtitled ‘provincial lives’ and Eliot’s Middlemarch ‘a study of provincial life’. And this tradition of using fictional narrative to reflect on social, political and environmental change is evident in contemporary fiction, too.

But writing also shapes and supports the relationships, interactions and activities that make up day-to-day life. It is woven into the way we do things, into how we arrange things, how we exchange goods and services and how we find our way around. As a basic organizing device, we use it to regulate and control each other’s behaviour. And so writing, like any other tool, can be put to use in very different ways – in ways that are helpful and productive, as well as in ways that are harmful and restrictive. This is as true today as it has been throughout history. Yet, over the last half-century, there have also been substantial changes in the way we write and what we write about. A rapid expansion in the volume of writing we produce has been accompanied by a diversification in the uses to which writing is put. These changes continue apace, and as they do, they challenge how we think about writing itself. New kinds of writing, and the technologies that they depend upon present new opportunities, but they also carry human and material costs, and we need to think carefully about these when we consider future developments.

Part of the work of this book has been to set out some basic concepts for talking about changing writing practices, and I will be summarizing these in this concluding chapter. I will also argue that globalization, the rise of digital communication and the spread of mass literacy have dramatically widened the reach of writing. This has provoked and been accompanied by a growing awareness of environmental devastation, human vulnerability and inequality on a global scale. The imperative to share knowledge in an unequal and troubled world seems to me to raise the stakes, to place a premium on effective collaboration and communication. As one of the most significant human inventions, writing has a key role to play in these debates and calls to action. After all, writing is a technology that extends the possibilities of human thought and action.

Ways of Thinking about Writing

To write is to engage in one particular form of human communication. This written form has a dynamic relationship with other kinds of human communication, with drawings, diagrams and photographic images, with gesture and speech, as well as with other notation systems. It is at the same time part of a much wider web of interactions that includes both communication with and between other organisms as well as with machines. In this book, I have repeatedly referred to writing as a visible language, by which I mean that it is a rule-bound system of symbols used to create words that are legible and comprehensible to those familiar with those particular conventions. Moreover, it is a communicative system that is designed by humans for humans. It is, in other words, a human invention. For many years, it was believed that writing was only invented once – in the ‘cradle of civilization’, in Mesopotamia. But even though writing systems and technologies are self-evidently varied, the idea that every system had its origins in Cuneiform has dominated popular understanding and scholarship. But the recent discovery and translation of writing from the Mayan civilization of Mesoamerica challenges this foundational view. It is now quite clear that Mayan literacy was well established centuries before the Spanish invasion, and had developed its own unique form of book-based writing.¹ In fact it’s now thought that writing systems were independently invented in both Egypt and China, and possibly in the Indus Valley and Easter Island as well. Given the accumulated knowledge about the history and development of writing across different cultures and in different parts of the world, it might then be more productive to think in terms of ongoing elaboration and innovation in linguistic symbol systems – and this seems to be a particularly important perspective to take as we bring the story of writing into the present day. Perhaps what matters most about writing is its versatility, its adaptability and its different histories of use.²

By definition, a written language must be visible to readers. I have referred to this throughout as the display principle. And display is dependent on technology. What I have called technology for writing encompasses all those processes that are necessary for the impressions, or marks of writing to be displayed. The history of writing is partly a history of technological innovation in tool design and display, of ever more sophisticated ways of producing those visible symbols. So far in its history, writing has involved all sorts of manual work. Writing a text involves the body, it involves the coordinated movements of hands and eyes. But the preparation of writing materials involves human labour, too. For instance, making the ink to produce Tibetan xylographs is still, to this day, dependent on complex processes like scraping soot from the base of an upturned bowl or fireplace, mixing it with arak, black-roasted barley and various other minerals and vegetables to modify its colour or thickness.³ In comparison, buying a ream of printing paper and an ink cartridge seems at once easier and more rarefied, but it is still the result of material processes – it involves people and things even if their manufacture and production are hidden or removed from view.

Some sort of order must be given to written symbols, to letters, characters or glyphs when they are displayed and as they appear on a surface, whether that’s a page, a scroll or a screen. Decisions about the size, orientation and grouping of symbols must be taken. Consideration must, therefore, be given to matters relating to the blank space between and around each item or combinations of items. I have referred to this use of graphic space as the design principle – a term that is capacious enough to include the use of conventional templates and layouts, more sophisticated graphic design and the sort of ad hoc decisions that need to be taken by a graffiti artist or a tattooist. Of course, the particular material form of the graphic space introduces its own set of constraints, but within those constraints, specific design choices signal different text types, and we see this in everything from maps and memoires to menus and mortgage agreements. In this way, the design principle acts as a bridge between the technology of writing and what writing gets used for. Take the standard A4 page, for example. Of course, it could be said to convey something in its own right, but further than that, the placement of text, the size of the words, their layout and devices like headings, subheadings, indentations and bullet point lists all give important cues to how it should be read. Font size, word spacing and line length have all been shown to impact readers – and as with different styles of handwriting they influence both reading speed and comprehension.⁴ In fact designing the visual space of the page is now a highly technical matter and includes considerations about kerning (the spacing between individual letters and characters), the use of serifs, as well as decisions about page furniture (headers, footers, pagination, etc.). All of these design features give subtle messages and are usually carefully orchestrated to produce a readable text that is pleasing to the eye. The very fact that so much has been invested in page design is a clue to the significance of this particular graphic space and its close relative – the book.

Books are material things. Most of them are fairly portable and reasonably durable. But they have such cultural significance that it often seems as if they are the highest expression of print culture. But as we saw in Chapter 4, there are ‘good’ books and ‘bad’ books – books that divide, books that incite hatred, as well as books that inspire and guide us. In the end, books are just one particular form of writing – one way in which writing is displayed. Yet the example of the book usefully illustrates how the materiality of writing, the display and design of text is part of the much larger picture of what we do with writing and how it affects us. In other words, writing isn’t just a bunch of marks left on a surface, it is in and of itself a technology. The chapters in the second half of this book used this idea of the technology of writing to look at some influential ways in which writing gets used. Doing this illustrates the uses and misuses of writing, and it provides a more nuanced view than the rather tired accounts that claim that writing is central to the growth of civilization, that it makes us more intelligent, or somehow more rational in our thinking processes. My account of the technology of writing illustrates how it is bound together with particular social and material practices – sometimes it helps to establish, sustain and develop worthwhile practices and at others it has a negative or stultifying effect, holding undesirable, unequal or unhelpful practices in place.

The idealized image of the writer or author, tirelessly involved in producing original work is just that – an ideal; and it is an ideal based on one particular kind of writing. And even that ideal is misleading. Those engaged in producing lengthy pieces of extended writing work in a social context bolstered by resources, expectations, assumptions and interactions. They are not cut off from the social material world, they are part of it. The texts they produce always have some sort of readership in mind, and the publication and distribution of a work still require the assistance of many others. The ideal image of writing as an individual enterprise is inadequate; perhaps it’s just an exceptional case. It’s probably more helpful to see writing as the work of many people and many hands – those involved in producing the tools and technologies writers work with, those they collaborate with, and those who help to bring a work to some sort of completion. It is more productive to see writing as a collaborative process, often produced through interaction and iteration (see Chapter 8, for example). And, of course, completion itself is never assured either. A piece of writing seldom ends with the writer, it can always be quoted and misquoted, extracted or taken out of context, put into dialogue with other texts, or read in unintended contexts, just as its material form can be ‘corrupted’, re-purposed, annotated, scribbled on or fashioned into something else entirely.

New Challenges

Threaded through this book is an account of the various changes that are associated with digital communication. These changes constitute a shift in the social and material relations that writing participates in and acts upon. On a macro-level, this has involved shifts in the topology of communication – changing relations between writing and speech, changing relations between writing and image, innovations in pictographic representation and the development of writing with, to and by machines. It has also involved deep-level changes in how writing materializes as well as the speed and spread of the written word. Such changes are enmeshed within new and emerging social arrangements. Our affiliations seem to be more dispersed, and we can easily maintain distributed social networks. Clusters of professional, interest or affinity groups are no longer dependent on co-location. Obvious advantages accrue, but we are still disturbed when such groups rehearse unpalatable views. We are worried that right-wing groups and conspiracy theorists are locked in ‘echo chambers’ in which ideologies are rehearsed and amplified, and rightly so – but perhaps we should also be mindful of how our own views, beliefs and interests may become locked in silos, too.

The hope that the Internet would lead to greater access to information, and to a democratization of knowledge has in some senses run aground. Although we can find out about almost anything by writing in that small text box offered by Google, what comes back is not necessarily helpful, or accurate. It is just not dependable. Much to the distress of some professional groups, the labels of ‘scientific’ or ‘research-based’ knowledge and information are regularly used to authenticate approaches, interventions, products and cure-alls that have not been thoroughly put to the test. Alongside this, there is concern that professional rigour may give way to popularity. The number of page views is not the only or even best way to assess the quality of information. There is a quite legitimate concern here that experts and authorities may be losing their power to celebrities and influencers. At the same time, however, those involved in scholarship, professional learning and research continue to enjoy the rich benefits of easily available online material. But even in these communities, practitioners are aware of changes and the slow erosion of control by academic groups, by editors, reviewers and specialist publishers.

Writing with new technology has repeatedly proved to be important in grassroots activism, in mobilizing protest and coordinating acts of resistance. In this sense, it can be used very effectively to give voice to local issues and injustices and to broadcast them far more widely than ever before. This is both new and significant – but although this kind of writing can help to rally international support or condemnation, it may, on its own, fall short of forcing political change as the Arab Spring, the Hong Kong student protests or the Black Lives Matters movement seem to suggest. It does seem quite clear though that social media can be used to accelerate political popularity and is a significant force in contemporary politics. In fact, new media are becoming inseparable from political life – whether the focus is the weaponization of social media in warfare and international conflict as in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or the conduct of national politicians.⁵ Certainly, in the latter case, we may perhaps be thankful for a new level of public scrutiny in which insensitive communication by political leaders can culminate in their removal or resignation from government.

Writing has always been used to control and regulate, as we saw in Chapter 5, and it is quite clear that nothing has changed with the development of new technology. At the micro-level, this can be seen in the ways in which the ownership of digital tools and platforms place constraints on what we can do and the new ways in which they try to capture our attention – whether through the limitations of templates, recommendations, alerts or in attempts to hold us in domains that are in fact walled gardens. Increasingly, intelligent applications attempt to anticipate what we write and how we think, and in doing so they also subtly influence us. We are perhaps all aware of the everyday frustrations of online processes that force binary or linear responses, and the non-negotiable nature of machine-based administrative procedures that strip away the interpretative mediation of other humans, who might, for instance, advise on an appropriate course of action, or help us to understand the relative importance or implications of a particular response.

The gradual automation of processes clearly makes some things easier and more efficient. Renewing vehicle tax online turned what I experienced as a lengthy chore into a 5-minute operation. And perhaps a half-hour online module on health and safety at work is as effective as a half-day course. Yet for all the gains there may well be losses – in the unintended learning that arises through interaction, the social connections that are made, the informal sharing that makes working together enjoyable and the sense of community that is engendered. All these important things can, of course, be achieved in other ways, too, and in the long run, this maybe where social media fills a gap. More worrying, perhaps, is the capacity for online writing to be used to exert deeper levels of political control. Here I’m thinking of the lengthy online training for Chinese Communist Party members that ensures they are aware of the latest interpretations of their President Xi Jinping’s thinking.⁶ This is a more extreme iteration of power and control with digital tools.

Re-writing the Script

When Marshall McLuhan dreamed of a global village, he imagined an interconnected world in which we all attained a ‘heightened human awareness’ and became ‘aware of global responsibilities’.⁷ In hindsight this was clearly a utopian idea, but it has exerted a strong influence on our thinking and still contains an optimistic message much needed in our troubled times. However, the globalization that he predicted has, in fact, been largely shaped by market forces and has often amplified pre-existing power imbalances. Furthermore, the globalizing trend seems to invite a flattening out of cultural nuance, of different ways of seeing and experiencing the world – an erasure of diverse histories. Although this is not how McLuhan envisaged a ‘global village’, it’s a trend that seems most in evidence in what we might think of as the ‘global marketplace’. Here goods and services are available to all who can pay, irrespective of individual or cultural differences or resources. Whilst we may be acutely aware of our human and global predicament, it often seems that we are severely limited in our power of influence. All these issues may seem to be tenuously related to writing – but I want to suggest that they raise some important considerations.

The gradual mechanization of writing, which began with early attempts at printing, became widespread when telegrams and typewriters appeared on the scene, and reached new levels of sophistication with word processing has undoubtedly led to a standardization of scripts. These advances in the mechanization of writing are closely interwoven with the political, economic and cultural influence of a European and Anglo-American elite. This has had the effect of privileging alphabetic scripts in general, and written English in particular. The rapid diffusion of new technologies for writing has meant that non-alphabetic writing has repeatedly had to catch up and adapt. This has been keenly felt by those using character-based and abjad writing systems. Chapter 9 contained a description of the development of Unicode – and in some ways, this undergirds the sort of interconnectedness necessary to McLuhan’s vision of a global village. If every writing system we know can be rendered in Unicode, universal access, written expression and translation all become possible. But the vision of universality always seems to involve compromise. For example, Persian writing is difficult to display accurately on a computer screen without losing some of the subtle meanings conveyed by its use of graphic space and its aesthetic qualities.⁸ And, of course, the adaptations and struggles that character-based languages have faced are well-documented (see Chapter 2). If Unicode is simply of benefit to tech giants then its ambitions are limited, but if it gives expression to more – to minority language groups and to endangered scripts it is to be welcomed.

The Cost of Writing

The economics of writing is an area that has attractively relatively little scholarly attention – but it is important to consider, particularly with respect to the development of new technologies. There are several aspects that are worth sketching out, all of which invite a more detailed exploration than is possible within this work. The first relates to the cost of producing the sophisticated and finely engineered devices that we tend to take for granted. Smartphones, tablets and laptops are expensive items, and the same goes for desktop computers and screens. Although they often seem to be indispensable to many of us in affluent societies, there are still those in poverty who are effectively locked out of the new economy of communication because they don’t own or have easy access to technology. And, on a global scale, there are significant populations who have little access and a limited infrastructure for supporting digital communication.

A second aspect of cost relates to the materials used in the production of these devices – and, in fact, the whole network that supports connectivity. Often this involves the extraction of rare minerals and scarce resources, and production techniques that are harmful to the environment (as we saw in Chapter 9). The green computing movement has done important work in thinking about minimizing the environmental impact of the manufacture, use and disposal of technological products and processes, from devices and their component parts to the relays and data centres of the communication infrastructure. However, faced with environmental catastrophe, there is a pressing need for the large corporations of the IT business to respond.⁹

A third aspect is the hidden human cost involved in all these processes. The sourcing of raw materials works on a global scale – but, like the manufacture of components, it always involves localized activity, often dependent upon a low-wage labour force, in poor working conditions, with all the attendant dangers to health, safety and well-being. For example, labour practices at Foxconn factories, such as the huge Longhua plant in Shenzhen, are notoriously poor. Foxconn is Apple’s most important supplier but because the operation is outsourced and, for most of the time hidden, there has been little damage to the reputation of a tech giant with a yearly revenue of billions of dollars.

Much more could be said about the cost of writing, but here I simply want to highlight some of the most current and pressing issues. They work to underline how writing is inextricably linked to the sociomaterial conditions and political economy that is embedded in. The reflexive capacity, that we have developed through learning to think with writing, is powerful precisely because it enables us to explore, to examine and to interrogate what is taken for granted or hidden from view, and in doing this it offers the possibility for something new to take shape – whether that is a new direction in thought, action or imagination, it introduces possibilities.

From Impressions to Expressions

One of the most important things we do with writing is to use it as a means of giving expression to our experience. Through writing, our thoughts, our feelings and our imagination are given material form. This material form of writing, as an external expression of our experience, then becomes available for review, reflection and development. It can be shared with others, or we can return to it ourselves at a later date. Writing is commonly stored in ways that allow us to revise, edit or add to over time. And although it is by no means the only way of externalizing experience in this way, it is a sophisticated tool whose use is closely interwoven with particular ways of thinking and knowing that are culturally valued and culturally valuable. Not only can we clarify our thinking through writing but we can also use it to build complex arguments, to construct elaborate theories as well as to develop fictional worlds that are enriching, entertaining and help us to understand our world better. And because writing acts as an extension of memory, ideas, themes and descriptions can be aggregated in order to propel a complex argument or develop a sustained narrative, and these can be returned to time and again.

Part of the endeavour of writing is to make sense of the world we inhabit. By introducing us to worlds of experience that are both similar and different to the ones we are familiar with, writing holds the potential for enrichment. The worlds of experience that are opened up may be historically and culturally far removed from our own, they may be based on very different assumptions and frames of reference, or draw upon unfamiliar ways of knowing and branches of knowledge we barely understand, but I think it can be legitimately argued that writing is important simply because building and sharing understanding is so important to us. It is, in fact, important to us as a species – a species that currently faces significant challenges. Our capacity to inform each other, to reflect on what we do and how we act, and to pool what we know is our best way of responding to these challenges, and writing is one of the most useful technologies we have for doing this.