How a strange user interface rewired Nietzsche’s brain
“The writing ball is a thing like me: made of iron
yet easily twisted on journeys.
Patience and tact are required in abundance
as well as fine fingers to use us.”
(Friedrich Nietzsche, on February 16th 1882)
In 1881, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was losing his eyesight. It had become extremely difficult for him to read or write, the latter being particularly distressing to him. We know from letters to his sister Elisabeth that he contacted a typewriter inventor in Copenhagen, the reverend Rasmus Malling-Hansen. Nietzsche purchased one of Mr. Malling-Hansen’s typewriters, and thus started a profound and tumultuous relationship between a strange industrial-era user interface and an aging philosopher with an affection for irony and axioms.
The Hansen Writing Ball typewriter, with its peculiar design and unique layout of keys, had a fundamental impact on Nietzsche’s writing style and thought processes during a period of time that some of his contemporaries called his Age of Aphorisms. While it was intended to be a portable and innovative writing tool, its user interface prioritized portability over usability, resulting in inherent inefficiency and difficulty in use. Compromises in human-machine interaction (HMI) design principles, such as observability, recoverability, responsiveness, and task conformance, worked upon Nietzsche’s brain, influencing his writing style and overall creative output.
HMI design principles are essential guidelines for creating user-friendly and efficient interfaces between humans and machines. Observability refers to the ability of users to perceive the state of the system and understand its behavior, ensuring that feedback and information are clear and easily accessible. Recoverability focuses on the system’s ability to help users rectify errors and return to a functional state smoothly. Responsiveness involves maintaining low latency and providing immediate feedback to user actions, enhancing the user’s perception of the system’s efficiency. Task conformance ensures that the interface conforms to users’ mental models, expectations, and established conventions, promoting ease of use and reducing cognitive load. By adhering to these principles, HMI design strives to optimize user experience and productivity while fostering a harmonious interaction between humans and machines.
It should be noted that the Hansen Writing Ball was one of the earliest industrial age user interfaces ever made. There were no fields of study of human-machine interaction or interface design. Rasmus Malling-Hansen should be recognized as a pioneer in this field, as well as an innovator in the iterative process of prototyping as a primary method of research.
The distinctive design of the Hansen Writing Ball, with its 52 keys arranged on a large brass hemisphere, was a remarkable ergonomic innovation for its time. However, the placement of the keyboard facing directly up, with most vowels to the left and consonants to the right, forced users to maintain a tiring hand position suspended over the ball while typing. This design decision compromised the HMI principle of observability. Since users couldn’t see the paper as it passed through the device, they were unable to detect errors until the paper was removed, leading to potential frustration and wasted effort. Often Nietzsche would stand over the typewriter, with a magnifying glass in one hand to find the letters, while using his index finger on the other hand to push the keys. This was tiring and time-consuming, especially for an older person.
The recoverability of the Hansen Writing Ball was also compromised by its design and construction. Given its intricate and delicate structure, repairs were likely complex and required specialized skills. This limited availability of qualified repair services made it difficult for Nietzsche to restore the machine to optimal functionality. He also could not see what he had written until after he finished typing, making error recovery a huge burden. If a user made an error, they had to start over from scratch.
The lack of task conformance in the Writing Ball’s user interface further impacted Nietzsche’s experience with the machine. The unconventional layout of keys forced users into uncomfortable and tiring positions, making it challenging for Nietzsche to achieve typing fluency and accuracy. This inherent friction with using the interface disrupted his cognitive processes, leading to a change in his writing style. The effort to commit even a single letter to paper was noticeable, and so every word had to count. Nietzsche would pontificate on the most efficient way to convey an idea. In other words, how to communicate with the fewest words possible.
As Nietzsche wrestled with the complexities of the Hansen Writing Ball, his Age of Aphorisms emerged, characterized by concise, fragmented, and often cryptic prose. This transformation in his writing style can be attributed to the rewiring of his brain brought about by the typewriter’s unique interface. As Nietzsche struggled with the cumbersome design, he had to adapt his thought processes to accommodate the limitations of the machine.
The process of using the Writing Ball may have encouraged Nietzsche to adopt a more aphoristic style, as it allowed him to cope with the typewriter’s limitations by expressing complex ideas in brief, self-contained statements. The disjointed nature of aphorisms may have mirrored the fragmented experience of typing on the Writing Ball, reinforcing this new style in Nietzsche’s writing. His interest in rhetoric and language, combined with his experience with the typewriter, created a symbiotic relationship between his understanding of language and the technological conditions of knowledge. This interaction between the philosophy of language and the practicalities of typing shaped Nietzsche’s thoughts and ideas during this period.
Nietzsche was fully aware of this, and made this prescient observation in a letter to a friend: “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts” (Carr 2008).
While the Hansen Writing Ball typewriter held promise as a portable writing tool, its unconventional design and compromises in HMI principles had unintended consequences on Nietzsche’s writing style and creative output. The typewriter’s user interface, intended to enhance portability, instead imposed physical strain and hindered usability.
The impact on Friedrich Nietzsche’s writing style and thought processes during his Age of Aphorisms is a testament to the interplay between technology and human cognition. The Hansen Writing Ball’s design fundamentally altered Nietzsche’s creative process and writing style, leaving an enduring mark on the history of philosophy and design.
