Changes

Even before they went away, typewriters changed.

At their peak, they were beautiful steel machines...with curvy designs and bright colors. And descriptive names...the Skyriter, the Corsair, the Sterling, the Futura. Typewriters had personality. This changed to a small degree in the '60s and by the mid-'70s typewriters were square plastic boxes with very little metal. And if you wanted colors you were in luck...as long as you liked tan or white.

To compete with computers, typewriters of the '80s were mostly electric, ugly pieces of plastic with names like the AE830. the SC110 and the GX-6750. Other than the tiny company logos, there was no way of telling one from the other. A sad end to a wonderful thing.

I went to sleep last night with my 6-month-old computer running and it rebooted itself in the middle of the night for no real reason. Anything I hadn't saved would have been lost forever. In a year or so it will be completely obsolete and unusable. Someday I'll push the button to turn it on and it won't do anything at all. I have eight typewriters, and none of them are newer than 1970. And they all work.

I don't fear the changes of the computer world, or hard drive crashes, or power outages or upgrades. These things aren't my problem. My priorities are elsewhere.