then and now

word processing

Now I love my laptop, and I'm sure I'm not alone. They have become extensions of ourselves and we mourn them when they inevitably die and take a little piece of our history with them, cursing ourselves for not backing up. These days we move on quickly though: new models, more memory, faster processing... a delicious new fling. But sometimes it's great just to indulge in a time before we "needed" these boxes that can do a million things a minute - when simply putting words on a page was enough.

Think of the tapping of keys as Hoffman and Redford seal Nixon's fate in the pressroom, as Itzak Stern compiles the list of names, or as Briony Tallis creates her unfortunate play. Perhaps I don't cause any such monumental ripples when I take out my Lettera 22 (a boot sale bargain, the poor thing), but at least I don't have to worry about my wifi crashing, or unwanted messaging, or my carbon footprint. I just tap away and hope the neighbours don't mind the clacking!