Why typewriters beat computers

Image credit: Kent K Barnes/kentkb

This BBC article caught my eye the other day (well ages ago actually), as I guess I had assumed that the typewriter was largely extinct!

Forget One Laptop per Child, how about One typewriter per child?!

For all that it is easy to have a laugh at the typewriter's expense,  the article makes a number of interesting points:

In many respects the typewriter beats the computer for simplicity and reliability.  This is backed up by Frederick Forsyth who tells us that: 

There was the steel-cased portable he used as a foreign correspondent in the 1960s. "It had a crease across the lid which was done by a bullet in Biafra. It just kept tapping away. It didn't need power, it didn't need batteries, it didn't need recharging. One ribbon went back and forward and back until it was a rag, almost, and out came the dispatches."

Better Security with a Typewriter?

Frederick Forsyth “I have never had an accident where I have pressed a button and accidentally sent seven chapters into cyberspace, never to be seen again. And have you ever tried to hack into my typewriter? It is very secure." 

While the two points above are doubtless being made with a large amount of tongue in cheek, and perhaps it's easy to be nostalgic about the good old days, maybe all this new stuff does have a way to go before it is as reliable, as easy to use and as simple as a computer. 

The most interesting point made in the article is in relation to the creative process.  Using a computer makes you work differently than when using a typewriter:

The writer Will Self is a convert. He went back to using a manual typewriter several years ago. "I think the computer user does their thinking on the screen, and the non-computer user is compelled, because he or she has to retype a whole text, to do a lot more thinking in the head," he said in a recent interview.

I think this is valid – I will also write while thinking while editing.  I don’t worry about making mistakes and perhaps don’t even worry much about structure.  Is this good, is this bad or is this just different.   I don't have any answers but it's certainly food for thought. 

I wonder what others think?  There are lots of fabulous creative things that are enabled by computers of course – no mashups possible with a typewriter, no multimedia productions.

So the typewriter retains a place in some homes.  For how much longer I wonder?

Even the people that make typewriters are not exactly optimistic:

Brother UK's Mr Jones admits he is "surprised" that people are still buying typewriters, and "amazed" his company sell a handful for more than £500, which would buy a laptop.

Progress?

For a bit of perspective...

...just watch this video from Afghanistan.  Meant to post this ages ago, and it was subsequently widely reported, but important to keep this to the fore to highlight the plight of young women in Afghanistan simply trying to get to school.

Too easy to blame Facebook!

My eye was caught today by a BBC article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7473818.stm) which in part was blaming what they described as the "Facebook generation" for the recent loss of a sensitive document from a train, left by a careless MOD employee. The suggestion is that young people today are totally insensitive to the notion of secret or private information as they are in the habit of sharing and obtaining private information about pretty much everything from social networking sites.

I have to say I find this a typically headline grabbing load of old nonsense. Just because people choose to share personal information on Bebo does not make for a society that is incapable of appreciating the importance of 'top secret' information, nor of being able to be responsible for keeping it that way! Someone made a mistake, end of story!

"Hey Baldy!"....you just have to laugh...

Came across this news story on the BBC website today and if it had been April 1st, I would have assumed it was a spoof! Bald teacher can't teach because he's bald! Now, I'm generally a fair-minded sort of soul, but try as I might I have been unable to locate any sympathy for the retired teacher who "claimed he was a victim of disability discrimination because he is bald"! Funnily enough, he lost the case as the judge decided baldness was no more of a disability than having a big nose or being short... Are you sure it's not April 1st???

It's an old person's game apparently!

So AOL - Time Warner have bought Bebo in an attempt to get in on the social neworking act. Not THAT much money(£417 million-ish) and I'm sure they know what they are doing! I'm quite sure they have done their sums and know what they are about - with 40 million subscribers there are lots of users out there and time will tell if they have backed the right horse. Will Bebo remain popular with notoriously fickly kids who wouldn't feel they have any particular brand loyalty if something cooler came along...

Anyway, I heard an interesting statistic on BBC Five Live as I was driving home this evening - during an interview with a web analyst bloke from an organisation whose name I forget. He said that there are almost double the number of over 50s online as under 18s. This seemed a remarkable figure, and it certainly took me by surprise! There must definitely be an opportunity for someone to come up with that killer app for the silver surfers out there!

Kids talk mobiles

Interesting post on Rory Cellan-Jones’s blog. Rory was in a school filming for the BBC’s School Edition project.

Rory clearly ‘gets it’! He talks about how the kids are “knowledgeable, articulate and very demanding of the technology” and that “While adults are dipping their toes into the mobile internet rather gingerly, children are taking the plunge”. And Rory also recognises that there are implications for this technology for the teachers; who, although the school currently bans mobile phones (without success) “they are even beginning to explore how mobile phones could be used in lessons – one class was using phones to film simple animations.”

Good to see the BBC getting it and getting it right!

Where do i fit...

...in the big picture???

I was reading Stewart Mader's excellent blog on wikis and his post on where wikis fit in the overall scheme of things. This article linked to a blog by Erica Driver on some work the Forrester people have done on looking at Web 2.0, its core technologies, its applications and most importantly, what they let you do and what that means for people, business, life.

I was particularly taken with the third concentric circle, Behavior Changes, and Erica's statement that "Not everyone is out there blogging and tagging; we've found that people fall into several buckets: creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, and inactives." This came to me just as I was contemplating similar thoughts myself in respect of me. While I blog a little (very little and very badly!) and I tag a bit (a bit of delicious and some flikr) I'm not really sure I'm a fully fledged creator. I comment rarely on blogs, so probably not much of a critic either. I suspect I'm probably either a collector or a joiner though I haven't investigated sufficiently to find out what in detail these are!

I think, however, that it's important that there is room for all these different types of people in the Web 2.0 world. It can be an intimidating place if you feel under pressure to come up with interesting and original posts when you appear to be surrounded by so many people doing so many amazing things and with such insightful comments that you can be left feeling rather overwhelmed and discouraged. Maybe the life of a joiner isn't so bad after all, and better a joiner than an inactive!

Still, in the words of my wee fella's teacher when he was in P1, "stick at it...".