I stumbled upon this image on Pinterest. It brought back some stuff for me. I have long had a fondness for typewriters. I have long valued my typing skills highly. Once, I could type over 100 words a minute with high accuracy. Well, my speed is still pretty high, but my accuracy has weakened. I chalk that up to, first, spell-check, and later autocorrect. The tools have made me lazy. I’m working on building that back up, as I still value this.
Anyway, though I first learned to type on a typewriter, they were electric (I’m not THAT old). My first typing experience was on the IBM Selectric. A lovely, if noisy, machine.
I used these heavily from high school all the way through the Navy. Then they faded from dominance, though I’d still need to use one on occasion (usually for government forms). By the 2000s, they’d vanished.
Now, though I liked the act of typing, I was also motivated by envisioning a future dominated by computers. Being able to use the keyboard would be a powerful, powerful tool. Clearly, I called that right!
Yeah, perhaps the image above is AI (I’m quite confident it is), but that’s not really the point. I found it fun and “enough”. Which might be AI’s main contribution: it’s enough. Mediocrity commoditized. But it’s enough to get me thinking, to capture a mood. Enough, I guess.
OK, well I am THAT old, I learned to type on a manual typewriter. Electric was better but a computer keyboard is the best of all for being able to “erase” mistakes easily. And easier on the hands.
Yeah, it is easier, isn’t it?
To me, the most fun part of having learning typing on typewriters is how powerfully I type. I make NOISE!
There’s a lovely bit of typing music I need to go find now!
And a romantic image.
~
Madly, typing defeated me and I walked out of typing classes because they gave me an anxiety attack.
But if things happen for a reason, an inability to type meant I met Leslie in the typing pool and she told me of plans she and Ken had to buy land in the country to build a mudbrick house on. I bought land near theirs and spent some happy years in Victoria’s ‘Golden Triangle’ before selling my land to help me buy my house in the city.
Why I did that is another story for another day … if only I could type it!