Xunxiao Xiao, Princeton University
This paper offers a comparative perspective of information technologies in the classical Roman world—it forays into the techniques of collecting, organizing, and controlling administrative information and legal knowledge in early imperial China (221 BCE-220 CE). As the number of writings increased enormously under the imperial administrations, the practical issue for Qin-Han scribes of how to handle the huge number of texts became more urgent. Driven by this pragmatic concern, a series of navigational devices for knowledge management came to the fore: more explicit and standardized layouts, a series of purposeful paratexts, and, most importantly, multiple tables of contents were found among several early imperial corpora such as the Yinqueshan, Hujia caochang, and Haihunhou manuscripts, all unseen in the pre-imperial corpora. I will demonstrate that the visual design of early imperial administrative writings is not presented unintentionally or only for the purpose of aesthetics, but as purposeful, pragmatic, and surprisingly advanced paratextual devices, aiming to offer cognitive efficiency in processing the colossal amount of bureaucratic data. That is, the sophisticated layout, lists, and tables of contents during the early empire were not merely new customs that the Qin-Han people suddenly adopted—it signifies a clear attempt to navigate the growing number of administrative data, to visualize bureaucratic information accurately, and to create new possibilities for epistemological practices. These early tables of contents with corresponding titles, for instance, can be seen as a prototype of a “search engine”—a paratextual device to help the reader locate and relocate certain passages in the middle of a long statute. The adoption and renovation of information technologies bespeak a pressing goal and corresponding practices for the scribes and scholars in early imperial China and the classical Roman world: writers and readers all had to find ways to control and utilize their information, much as we do today.