Copy/Scan Technics

@ The Printing Press

@ The Copy Machine

Since the invention of the printing press, the reproduction of printed documents has been getting easier and easier.  But nothing has done more to democratize the means of reproduction than the electronic copy mechanisms of the 20th century.  Institutions such as schools could suddenly perform much of their copying and scanning needs in-house.

The Official Machine of Degraded Opinion

It's hard to imagine the magnitude of the shift from scribes to the printing press, in terms of how much that shift accelerated the reproduction of writing.  With the Scantron, a prototypical machine reader (which are currently exploding onto the scene of everyday reading), we can see the early signs of an acceleration similar to the printing press.
This acceleration initiated by the Scantron-as-machine reader does for processes of reading what the printing press did for processes of reproduction.

With the printing press (and more so with the electronic copier), I can run a piece of paper through a machine and get an instant reproduction of the writing I "programed" into it.  With the Scantron (and other reading machines), I can run a piece of paper through a machine in order to get an instant, programmed reading of the document.

What forms of reading can be programmed?  If a test is to be graded by a Scantron, then the Scantron must be able to read it--and that reading must be programmable.  Machine readers, like all computers, are masters at one thing and one thing only: counting (or calculating).  Thus, all programmed reading is really just a (sophisticated) form of counting.

What forms of writing lend themselves to programmable reading?  Obviously, at the current stage of AI, a machine reader can not "read" a novel or poem (or even a memo) anymore than the printing press or electronic copier can "write" one.

In order for its reading to programmable, applications of the Scantron (eg, standardized testing) must remove the accident from writing: it, like game theory, recasts practical reason as pure reason.