My students and I were talking about how technology makes life convenient at work and school. I told them of the days when we used a mechanical typewriter that went "click-clack-tikitikitak-zing" and how our hands would get all black from turning the ribbons (a.k.a ink). When we made mistakes, we pressed the backspace button, got a "correction tape", positioned the tape in front of the word and re-typed on the tape over the erroneous word so that it made the mistake "white".
In 2007, I came across Paolo Dy's short movie in English, "QWERTY", a story of a mentally disabled man accused of killing his employer. The doctors tried to make sense of the silent man who said nothing all day except for the seemingly random characters he tirelessly and intensely churned out, one paper after the other, with the keys of an ancient typewriter that once belonged to his alleged victim.
Watch Paolo Dy's incredible entry to Steven Spielberg's "On The Lot" competition.
This is amazing.
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I do miss the typewriter. I know Sunsh recently purchased one. I am envious! I want to go home and bring to the UK the one I used to write my essays in high school.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of QWERTY, some contacts from Mensa vouch for the use of DVORAK as the more ergonomic of the two keyboard arrangements. I've never seen a DVORAK keyboard but you can change the keyboard settings on your computer. Tried that but I have years and years of muscle memory on my fat fingers to learn another keyboard organisation so I changed it back to QWERTY. Phew.
Hi k lo! Yup, I do miss that clickety-click of the typewriter along with the fingers caked in soot from carbon paper and rewinding the ribbon, correction tape for backspace and onion skin paper. It also carried with it the smell of... oil? grease? What was it? Re: DVORAK. Given that it has the same number of letters and keys, I wonder how a re-arrangement of letters can be any better? I'm curious to see one though and try :p
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