[HN Gopher] Woody Allen and His Typewriter (2011) [video]
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Woody Allen and His Typewriter (2011) [video]
Author : brudgers
Score : 20 points
Date : 2021-12-27 04:52 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| An interesting thing I noted some years ago on several forums,
| when someone would post images or news articles about younger
| people using typewriters, the comments would very often turn
| extremely vitriolic and invoke violence, the 'these people should
| all be x' sort of thing where x ranged from gulags to getting
| kicked while on the ground. Such comments may have only been
| rhetorical in nature, but I've always found it interesting that
| such rhetoric is employed against people who merely have an
| affinity for older types of technology. Yet I've never heard
| anyone threaten to beat someone up for liking old cars. Maybe
| when/if electric cars predominate, the same will be said of those
| who restore 70s Ford Mustangs.
| mo_lester wrote:
| khazhoux wrote:
| > An interesting thing I noted some years ago on several
| forums, when someone would post images or news articles about
| younger people using typewriters, the comments would very often
| turn extremely vitriolic and invoke violence, the 'these people
| should all be x' sort of thing where x ranged from gulags to
| getting kicked while on the ground
|
| Sounds like you hang out in some really unhealthy user forums.
| dwringer wrote:
| The grandparent comment immediately brought to mind [0],
| which evidently occurred right on the front page of reddit.
|
| Edit: This was discussed here on HN at the time [1] and again
| about six months ago [2].
|
| [0]https://www.theawl.com/2013/09/i-am-an-object-of-internet-
| ri...
|
| [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6412708
|
| [2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27457618
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| The thing of it is, so far as I can remember because this was
| years ago, it was just rather normal forums and subreddits,
| news, what's going on today type of stuff, not particularly
| 'edgy' areas of the internet.
|
| It reminds me of a more extreme version of the anti-cursive
| sentimentality that sometimes comes up.
|
| I sometimes think there is a technological orthodoxy, of
| sorts. Older people are tolerated for their use of
| typewriters, fountain pens, or DOS-era WordPerfect/Wordstar,
| but if younger people start 'backsliding' or 'degenerating'
| then it's seen as a problem.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I love the "what do you do when you need to cut & paste?" to
| which Allen replies "I have these scissors ..."
|
| I.e. he literally cuts and pastes.
| blockwriter wrote:
| I wrote the final draft of a very ambitious, very flawed novel on
| an IBM Selectric ii typewriter[0]. Previous drafts were
| handwritten in notebooks. I even had to change the typing element
| frequently because the book's dialogue took place in cursive
| font. I was on a years long abstinence from all personal
| electronics, aside from my trusty Alcatel OT871AGPIB. The final
| portion of the book had to be finished on a cheap Japanese
| reproduction typewriter because my Selectric died and was, sadly,
| abandoned to the curb of the city I was in at the time. It was
| the most intense period of sustained creative effort I have ever
| known.
|
| Thinking back on it, I have a mix of regrets and admiration for
| the kind of focus the lack of distraction produced. Once it
| became clear that my paper manuscript was doing me no favors in
| an industry that I had no inroads into, I had to use OCR to
| convert the manuscript, with all of its white-out and shadows of
| text where the ribbon ran out of ink or the correcting ribbon was
| used, to a PDF. This was a mess and only produced more work that
| was not creative in nature. Still, if I ever get my career on a
| firmer footing, and perhaps can afford to hire a secretary, I
| would consider going back to writing in analog. I wouldn't be
| surprised if a mid-major tech company released a product line
| that more or less accomplishes a facsimile of the benefits a
| typewriter confers, even if it is just a passing fad.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric_typewriter
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've found that OCR software doesn't work well on typewritten
| letters. It makes so many mistakes that it's easier to just
| tape the letter to the side of the monitor and just type it in.
| blockwriter wrote:
| That would be my method where n = 1, but this was n > 500.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| Interesting. I believe Tom Hanks is also really into typewriters.
|
| However, everything is required to be digital these days and
| often we're submitting and publishing online or in unusual places
| that, save for a secretary, a typewriter is just impractical.
| WalterBright wrote:
| My dad wrote a book in the 60s. My mom took on the task of
| typing the book in, over and over and over as the text was
| manipulated. What drudgery.
|
| My dad once told me that someone would get very rich by
| inventing:
|
| 1. a tv that could be hung on the wall like a picture
|
| 2. a typewriter that enabled editing the text
|
| He was right on both counts.
|
| https://generalatomic.com/jetmakers/index.html
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| It depends on the process.
|
| If you take it that the 1st draft is supposed to be as close to
| the final as possible (or 1st draft only draft) then computer-
| first is the only option for modern distribution schemes
| (excepting typewriter bloggers who photograph typed pages, of
| course.)
|
| However, if it is taken as a given that the text will be
| revised, broken apart, re-contextualized, added to, subtracted
| from, etc, then transcribing from one medium to another
| (typewriter or handwritten to computer, in this case) is merely
| a point for such to occur. In some regards this can even
| _force_ good practice in that a casual glance no longer
| suffices and the text has to be thought about again as it is
| re-typed.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| Cormac McCarthy famously used the same Olivetti Lettera 32 for 46
| years. When it eventually broke down, he sold it at an auction
| and bought an identical (functional) model.
| https://www.wired.com/2009/12/cormac-mccarthys-typewriter-di...
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