Monday, November 20, 2017

Typewriters are technology

14 comments:

  1. Techmology - what is it all about? Is it good, is it wack? - Ali G

    Funny how nobody walks up to the owner of a restored '57 Chevy and asks why they hate anti-lock brakes, fuel injection and the safety of unibody construction and 3-point seatbelts. :D

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  2. Well, not exactly obsolete. I would find it impossible to send a typed letter (or make a typed jam jar label) without a typewriter. There's simply no alternative. I can get around the postal service by hand delivery. I could probably even make a decent job of making paper, if I had to. Or typecast it. But the typed letter would go unwritten without a venerable, mechanical writing machine. BTW, since when did Ali G air in Phoenix?

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  3. Over used words: technology, awesome, on-going, absolutely.. Most people thing anything is technology. Technology is only applied science and there are many many branches. Most people also think everything is digital or needs to be digital. I generally ask them about analog computers or why 1+1 = 3.

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    1. You'll have to explain "1+1 = 3" to me!

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    2. I guess you mean 11 in binary notation?

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    3. Reminds me of a saying I saw on a mug in my faculty lounge: "There are 10 kinds of people. Those who know binary, and those who don't."

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  4. You inspired a post about how I can teach grad courses with robotics AND grad courses with typewriters: https://vermontvintagetypewriter.blogspot.com/2017/11/is-typewriter-best-tool.html

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  5. I love the conclusion... "why do you hate technology?"
    I think the most interesting idea here is that if you are just waiting to replace your tool with one which is more efficient you don't really love it. It's going to be a good talking point with the next person who thinks my typewriter is silly.

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    1. Thanks. I think that is the most significant insight I got from this rant.

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  6. "Obsolete" is a relative term. The only way a typewriter can become obsolete will arrive when we replace our alphabets. :P

    In the career I am studying, I was taught that writing is also technology, along with paper and other "obsolete" writing tools, from stones to typweriters and then computers. xD

    I am amazed by the fact typewriters from the 1910's, 20's and 30's still can write. It's the same sensation that 19th century and early 20th century wind-up clocks and 40's-80's classic bicycles give to me. Despite it's "obsolete", I love mechanical devices. Is a giant pipe organ "obsolete" now when we have synthetizers? Is a train or a ship obsolete now we have airplanes and rockets? I think not. xD

    In the same way, I love electronic, analog devices (turntables, cassette recorders and audio tapes, floppy drives, Betamax tapes and VCR's) and the first digital devices (old organ-like or piano-like synthetizers, SNES videogame consoles and their cartridges, the first IBM PC's and Macs, etc.). Vinyl records, not hard disks, are kept in museums of music and those places that are like libraries, but of music instead of books. xD

    It happens that there was a mindset from the beginning of time until the middle 90's that ruled technology, and it was replaced by other kind of mindset when people decided over-developing the digital technology... Efficiency doesn't mean "doing things faster". Efficiency is about doing things with better quality and with less effort than doing them manually. And typewriters mix a word processor and a printer at the same time, and printing errors are always caused by humans (or lack of upkeeping), and not by a program's glitch or due to "hardware's obsolescence". Certainly, I can't set the type (unless replacing the whole type basket), but the typewriter doesn't require updates, paying expensive licenses to operate it (or downloading illegal copies of a program to use it), nor electricity either. In the same way, bicycles doesn't need neither fuel nor a complex computer in charge of the gears and control instruments, and radio transmissors doesn't need software to operate (we might have been radio hams instead of Internet's users, and that way we'd avoid paying a bill to get in touch with each other). :P

    I Hope & Expect humankind can get my conclusion by itself some day...

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