Sunday, June 08, 2008
Interesting reading
- Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0, on how newspapers still don't get the Web, as shown through The Washington Post's coverage of a weather story.
- Neil Hallows of the BBC on how some writers prefer the typewriter over the computer.
- BoingBoing, on how a spoof of Google puts a happier spin on the news — a new definition of search engine optimization.
posted by Andy Bechtel at 12:45 PM
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Thanks for linking to the typewriter story.
I was born in 1980. I learned to use a computer when I was seven. Years later, my high school typing teacher made us practice on typewriters once a week, but the rest of the time was spent on computers. So, although I have a passing familiarity with typewriters, they've always seemed more quaint than useful.
They've also seemed intimidating. Whenever older friends or relatives talk about their typewriter days -- how whole pages had to be retyped because of one misspelled word, how incorporating footnotes into a document was akin to conducting open heart surgery -- it makes me wonder how anything ever got written, much less published.
On the other hand, I can relate to Richard Plot's complaint that it's so easy to "dither" on a computer -- changing words, rearranging paragraphs, skipping over to the Internet -- that a writer can waste a lot of time. This quote of his makes me think that using a typewriter may not be the worst thing in the world:
"I didn't compose most of the book on a typewriter, but every once in a while I would put out a few pages on a typewriter, a first draft, and it was kind of refreshing."
I'm tempted to skip over to eBay and bid on one.
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Editrix,
Glad you enjoyed the link.
I was enrolled in a typing class in 1980. I was 13 years old, and my junior high school had one computer, located in the library.
Thanks for linking to the typewriter story.
I was born in 1980. I learned to use a computer when I was seven. Years later, my high school typing teacher made us practice on typewriters once a week, but the rest of the time was spent on computers. So, although I have a passing familiarity with typewriters, they've always seemed more quaint than useful.
They've also seemed intimidating. Whenever older friends or relatives talk about their typewriter days -- how whole pages had to be retyped because of one misspelled word, how incorporating footnotes into a document was akin to conducting open heart surgery -- it makes me wonder how anything ever got written, much less published.
On the other hand, I can relate to Richard Plot's complaint that it's so easy to "dither" on a computer -- changing words, rearranging paragraphs, skipping over to the Internet -- that a writer can waste a lot of time. This quote of his makes me think that using a typewriter may not be the worst thing in the world:
"I didn't compose most of the book on a typewriter, but every once in a while I would put out a few pages on a typewriter, a first draft, and it was kind of refreshing."
I'm tempted to skip over to eBay and bid on one.