She’s using a typewriter to write a letter…
The letter is to a friend in Spain who sent a postcard — “apparently people don’t send them anymore, either” — asking for a real letter. She bought the typewriter last summer at Goodwill.
“I just love old things… I was surprised that the ribbon is still good.”
Note the paper dictionary she must use to find the correct spelling of words.
All of which proves once again that Kevin Kelly is right when he describes, in What Technology Wants, the Technium. There technologies are immortal:
I decided to see how many old technologies a post-modern urban citizen living in a cosmopolitan city (like San Francisco) could lay his hands on. I decided to try to get all the products on a sample page from the 1898 Montgomery Ward catalog. One hundred years ago, there was no electricity, no internal combustion engines, few highways, and little communication except via the post office – upon which the Montgomery Ward catalog operated. A substantially different technological paradigm reigned at this time. The faded newsprint of my reproduction catalog had the air of a mausoleum. However, even on first survey it was clear that most of the thousand of items for sale one hundred years ago, as cataloged by this wish book, were still sold now. Although the styling is different, the underlying technology, function, and form are the same. A pair of leather boots with doodads is still a leather boot.
Robert Krulwich begged to differ, only to conclude, consider me beaten:
…to a degree I didn’t appreciate until Kevin forced me to look — technology does indeed persist. Tools, machines, they change, they adapt, they morph, but they continue to be made. I hadn’t noticed this tenaciousness before.
To conclude, an appreciation. The typewriter in the 21st century:
I’m not finding news on the status of the documentary project.