Thinking with a Word Processor⁽¹⁾

In a well-known passage of the Blue Book Wittgenstein remarks: "We may say that thinking is essentially the activity of operating with signs. This activity is performed by the hand, when we think by writing; by the mouth and the larynx, when we think by speaking." We may, he continues, legitimately employ the expressions "'we think with our mouths', or 'we think with a pencil on a piece of paper'".⁽²⁾ When one of Wittgenstein's favourite authors, Friedrich Nietzsche, started to use a typewriter and sent some rhymes he produced on it to a friend, the latter - a composer - commented upon the robust language. "Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom", the friend wrote; "with me at any rate this could happen; I do not deny that my 'thoughts' in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper".⁽³⁾ To which Nietzsche replied: "You are right - our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts."⁽⁴⁾