How has the copier changed the way we work and play?

Recently, I went to Whisk, a store selling kitchen supplies in Manhattan. Next to the cash register is a strange new device: a three-dimensional printer. This shop bought this equipment, which prints biscuit knives by carefully and slowly squeezing a layer of hot plastic, thus making objects. Any shape you can think of can be generated from a digital blueprint. The clerk told me that there was a thunderbolt-shaped cutting machine, a coat and a racing car in the shop.

"Send it in the morning, and we will be fine in a week or two." . I don't even need to design my own cookie cutter. I just need to download one of the hundreds of models created by amateurs and put them online for anyone to use for free. In the world of three-dimensional printers, people can now copy and enjoy not only words and pictures on paper, but also physical objects.

At one time, 3D printers were expensive and elite tools used by high-end designers, who used them to prototype products such as mobile phones or airplane parts. But now they are becoming mainstream: you can buy one for 500 to 3,000 dollars, and many fans, schools and libraries already have it. Sometimes they print their own designed objects, but you can also "scan" the objects with your smartphone or camera, convert multiple pictures into three-dimensional models, and then print them repeatedly to make copies of the objects. Do you want a statue of auguste rodin Carriat Brown? Or is this just a plastic game substitute for Katan settlers? You are so lucky. Helpful people have scanned these items and put them online. As 3D printing becomes cheaper and cheaper,

How will it change society? What does it mean to be able to save and share physical objects and make as many copies as necessary? One way to think about this problem is to consider the remarkable influence of the first technology that allows people to copy many things in their daily lives: the Xerox copier.

For centuries, if you didn't want to publish the whole book, copying a document was a slow and arduous process, mostly done by hand. For a long time, inventors have been looking for a device that can automatically complete this process, but with little effect. Thomas Jefferson used a magnifying glass: when he was writing, a wooden device connected to his pen manipulated another pen in exactly the same way, creating a mechanical copy. James Watt, the pioneer of the steam engine, invented a coarser device, which could crush a newly written page and another piece of paper and transfer some ink in the opposite direction. At the beginning of the 20th century, the most advanced one was the mimeograph, which made a small set of ink, and each set would become thinner and thinner. It's not perfect.

Kotryna Zukauskaite later released "914"-the first easy-to-use copier in 1959. After more than 20 years of experiments, this is a cleaner "drying" process. The copier produces electrostatic images of documents on a rotating metal drum, and uses it to transfer powder toner to a piece of paper, and then seals it in place by heating. It's very fast, and it only takes 7 seconds to complete a copy. When the first 648-pound desk was introduced to corporate customers, some of them had to tear down the door to install these behemoths, and the era of copying began.

Or, more accurately, the explosive development of replication began. Xerox estimates that the monthly income of customers is about 2,000 copies, but the monthly income of users can easily reach 65,438+million copies, and some even reach 65,438+million copies. Before 9 14 machine appeared, Americans made 20 million copies every year, but by 1966, Xerox had increased the total number to 1400 million copies.

David Irving, the author of Xerox's historical work "Replication in a few seconds", said: "This is a great change in the momentum of information flow." .

In fact, it has changed the way knowledge flows in the company. Before the copier appeared, when an important letter arrived, only a few high-level people applauded. The original version moved ci from one office to another, and used a "delivery list" to show who had read the book and where the next book should go. But after the copier came, employees began to copy magazine articles and white papers that they thought others should see and spread them freely. Wrote a memo? Why not send it to everyone? Copying is a kind of liberation and an addiction.

"The button waiting to be pressed, the whistle of action, and the neat copy falling into the tray all add up to an intoxicating experience. The novice operator of the copier will feel an impulse to copy all the files in his pocket, just like john brooks wrote in an article in The New Yorker in 1967.

White-collar workers have complained about information overload before. But the culprits are industrial process book publishers and newspapers. The copier is different. It turns ordinary office drones into overloaded engines, handing piles of materials to confused colleagues. "You will have a lot of meeting documents," Owen said with a smile. "No one has seen them."

Virus replication also infects our daily life. Employees will secretly put their personal belongings on the machine and copy their IRS returns, party invitations and recipes. Chain letters began to ask participants not only to forward this letter, but also to send 20 copies, because, hey, anyone can do it now! People soon realized that they could make paper copies of the real thing, put their hands on the glass of the copier, or pat the tail of their pants on the glass of the copier. The reproduction of this kind of object can achieve strange practical purposes. When the criminal goes to prison, the police will not describe what is in his pocket, but just throw them on the glass of 9 14 and click copy.

The copied things make strange noises, which makes Xerox people worry that they have released Prometheus' power. "Have we really contributed to making garbage and nonsense easier to be copied? Saul Linowitz, CEO of Xerox International, was worried in Life magazine.

However, for ordinary people, copying nonsense is the best part of photocopiers, which is illegal. Behind the anonymity of a copied document, office workers began to circulate some pornographic jokes and cartoons. Sometimes it's a fake memo that cruelly mocks office life-a "hurried work" calendar with chaotic dates, asking customers to "book his work on the 7th and deliver it on the 3rd", or an "organization chart" cartoon, in which a smaller supervisor kisses a supervisor on the ring, and he also has a smaller supervisor kissing his ring one by one. Jokes about the intelligence of all ethnic groups abound, as do pornographic content. This jaw-dropping cartoon depicts the role of "peanut".

"These copies have Rorschach ink. You must fold it up and put it in the sun. Someone's posture is beyond your imagination, "said Michael Preston, a retired professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who published a collection of early photocopiers, which he called the folklore of the photocopying age.

Artists all over the world are also flocking to it, and they are excited about the high contrast and low fidelity printed matter it produces, which is completely different from photography or traditional printed matter. As they show, photocopying has an aesthetic feeling. "When I show it a curling iron, it will give me back a spaceship. When I showed it the contents of the straw hat, it described a terrible pleasure of descending to the volcano, "said Patty Hill, an artist who is famous for using photocopiers. "In essence, the copier is more than just a copying tool." It has become a publishing mechanism of Arosa-a way to grab the means of production and spread ideas that were difficult to edit before. "Copying brings a terrible rule to the publishing industry, because it means that every reader can be an author and a publisher at the same time," marshall mcluhan wrote in 1966.

It has great influence in politics. Secrets are harder to keep and documents are easier to leak. Daniel Ellsberg used a copier to copy Pentagon documents (even let his children help in a friend's office). Worried about the power of photocopiers, the Soviet Union strictly controlled the use of photocopiers. In the United States, some activists took action to make doctors and politicians take AIDS more seriously, which had a strong impact to some extent because they could use photocopiers. Many people work for media giants, such as Kant nast and NBC. After finishing their work, they will use thousands of leaflets and posters to publicize the AIDS campaign in new york.

"They will paste all these magazines, and then they will make thousands of posters and leaflets, which are so indispensable for their behavior," said Kate Eichhorn, an assistant professor at the new school who is writing a book about photocopiers. "These big companies are supporting this radicalism." The same force drives the world of alternative cultures: fans of TV programs, science fiction novels or movies start to make magazines, and these small publications are dedicated to their enthusiasm. The Grrrl movement of young feminist musicians in 1990s was frightened by the way the mainstream media treated women, and basically created its own media field through photocopiers. 1978 The author of DIY creative guide "Copyart" said: "For many people, the copier is not only a function as an office tool, but also a means of self-expression.

But all photocopiers worry traditional authors: if someone can copy an article from a book or magazine, they will definitely lose sales and don't have to pay for the original. Libraries and universities are hotbeds of so many repetitions that publishers finally took their complaints to court and lost in the 1970s. Lisa Gitman, a professor of English and media studies at new york University, said: "In the late 1970s, copyright was very loose, which was really a great moment." . Nowadays, Congress is working hard-usually at the request of film studios or record companies in the opposite direction, which makes it more difficult for people to copy things digitally. However, in the first cultural upsurge of photocopiers, legislators and judges came to the opposite conclusion: plagiarism is beneficial to society.