Manual Scripts

> copying texts by hand was, moreover, practiced throughout imperial China, despite the spread of printing

This may strike some as foolish; why copy a book by hand when printing can do the same much faster and with fewer errors? Why walk when a car can get you there so much quicker? Why ed when an IDE towers you over the code like "Algernon, at the peak"?

Cultural tradition and aesthetics can be blamed for some hidebound behavior, or that given the depth of the Chinese writing tradition there were some books simply not popular enough for the printing press. This goes by the name of the "long tail" these days, the other side of which (and more condescending) being the "internet shallows". Such artists as Thoreau and Bashō were prone to walkabout; using a car or some other technological terror would be missing the point.

Many do not need deep engagement with a text, especially if it's a throwaway essay during the motions of an education. Small wonder both sides might turn to AI when there are some four million student essays to be written and graded on Beowulf this year. (My parents used to rope me into grading; it's time consuming work and teachers probably are not paid enough for the trouble. Yet another market failure?) At least someone does need to be engaged in the details, like what is all that build code actually doing? Or does and how does the code compile under all that IDE? Why is all that code so very slow? This sort of distraction free detail work may never be a popular activity, nor does it need to be.

Another question to ask may be why older (therefore, badder) forms persist in the age of IDEs and the modern web. Is Google off-ranking something much different from a Church or Government purging texts deemed inappropriate?

> Even earlier, a discussion in Plato's Phaedrus considers whether the transition from oral tradition to reading texts was harmful to memory, reflection and wisdom.