Mullaney Awarded 2025 CBI Human-Computer Interaction History Prize

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (05/22/2025) — Stanford University Professor of History Thomas S. Mullaney is the co-recipient of the 2025 CBI Human Computer Interaction (HCI) History Prize for his book The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age (MIT Press, 2024). This is a well-researched, creative, exquisitely designed, and eloquent book. He offers not only fresh vantages into the vital topic of the Chinese computer, but also the underlying human-computer interaction (HCI) and the art of writing.
Mullaney takes readers on a journey that begins with a misunderstood recent crisis of sorts. This is the “character amnesia” of hundreds of millions of Chinese computer users as they draw on the underlying “middleware” of “Input Method Editors” (IMEs) and symbolic inputs to create thousands of Chinese characters on Western, Latin-Language-based QWERTY keyboards. He describes the development of stenographers' technological precedents in the West, where inputs of "primary" and displays of "secondary" transcripts were coded creations anticipating the more complex IMEs in China. He also highlights how precursors, learning, and technology transfer were multidirectional as IMEs and digital processing in China underlie “autocomplete” technologies of words or phrases on digital devices worldwide today. Throughout, Mullaney deftly and compellingly intertwines the story of engineers and users, and of design, practice, and experience, in our global “hypographic age.”
Mullaney's contribution is of the highest order, breaking vital new ground in HCI history, and Chinese and global history of technology. We are very grateful to HCI pioneer Prof. Ben Shneiderman for making this annual award possible.