Nostalgia For Typewriting? Not Me

Forbes’ Alex Knapp isn’t lamenting the final end of the typewriter era. Neither am I, although I still have two of them – a compact Smith-Corona and a hulking, ancient Remington office desktop model. Neither has typed a stroke for years, and I should just send them wherever old typewriters go to die, but there is sentimental value. I cut my teeth as a writer and journalist on those machines.

No regrets about moving on, however. Aside from non-dependence on electric power, I can’t think of one practical advantage the typewriter has over the personal computer.

One thing a computer, or even a tablet, soft keyboard notwithstanding (although Knapp considers them “neat, overpriced toys”) is unequivocally a massive improvement in the writer’s life is for typing, to say nothing of vastly easier, quicker, and more versatile corrections, editing and revision.

However, I agree with Knapp, who says even though he’s been using computers since he was 5, he still prefers to think out loud on pen and paper, and still do a lot of my composing on paper in longhand, entering the draft on the computer with Dragon Dictate dictation software. Of course I came much later in life to computers, getting my first word processor when I was 40 and my first Mac, a compact Mac Plus desktop, a year later.

As Alex puts it, like the vinyl record and the compact tape cassette, typewriters served their purpose, but we now have much, much better substitutes.