Do we really [I]NEED[/I] such wonderful toys to continue our chosen craft?

I'm speaking of the internet, computers, and things of that nature that we embrace so easily - because it works for us. Right?

Think of all the wonderful things humans have accomplished since we began writing on stone tablets and caves. We can do it all over again if we really have to.

As for me? I'm happy with a simple pen and paper. Maybe a good book to read. If there are no books, we can create more. Yet, I digress. Please don't take away our wonderful internet. Our addiction to it will not fade quietly into the night.

In the world we grew up in, it's two-thousand something. The future is ours.

This has not been a service of the Emergency Broadcast System. Nor is it a Public Service Announcement. Just don't take the girl.

We now return to your regular programing. Same bat channel, same bat time.

ThatsTheGuy said:

Please don't take away our wonderful internet. Our addiction to it will not fade quietly into the night.

In the world we grew up in, it's two-thousand something. The future is ours.

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Mate, if someone's threatening to take away your internet, you punch them in the nose!

Without a computer, I would not be writing. It's as simple as that. I'm visually handicapped, so handwriting is out of the question. I can type Braille, but who apart from a rapidly dwindling minority can read that? Thanks to computers and the 'Net, I can share my stories without the hassle of printers, typewriters or vac-form Braille documents.

There are audiobooks and text-to-speech solutions too, but with most audiobook peddlers catering to sighted people and making their stores a bitch to navigate without eyes, and OCR requiring quite a bit of time and dilligence for usable scans, they are also not quite optimal. But that's just the fun part in a handicapped person's life: Make shit work for you.

My handwriting is too awful to read.
Give me a good keyboard and I'm OK, no problems!

JasonClearwater said:

Mate, if someone's threatening to take away your internet, you punch them in the nose!

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How about you kick him in the shmoo? ;p

I was writing (and editing) books before the advent of the computer and the Internet. No, I absolutely would not give them up. I'd stop writing (or editing) altogether if we had to give them up. I'm pretty sure that anyone who thinks otherwise never had to work without them.

sr71plt said:

I was writing (and editing) books before the advent of the computer and the Internet. No, I absolutely would not give them up. I'd stop writing (or editing) altogether if we had to give them up. I'm pretty sure that anyone who thinks otherwise never had to work without them.

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Agreed. I can type as fast as I can speak - I can write approximately eight words a minute if I have to use a pen, and I won't be able to read any of them.

JasonClearwater said:

Agreed. I can type as fast as I can speak - I can write approximately eight words a minute if I have to use a pen, and I won't be able to read any of them.

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You know, I had you down as someone who spoke faster than that.




Wait. I misread something there, didn't I?

Carry on.

JasonClearwater said:

Agreed. I can type as fast as I can speak - I can write approximately eight words a minute if I have to use a pen, and I won't be able to read any of them.

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I have gotten that way too.

In doing a deep cleaning of my house, I found the first novel I wrote. Pen, paper and cursive. Made my eyes cross to look at it. I wrote that over 20 years ago. And even if I print in all caps, I still can't read it. My grocery lists even baffle me.

I also remember typing up poems on an old Royal typewriter. The kind that weighs a ton and doesn't have the ability to correct anything.

Prior to that, it was a ditto. One of those horrible things that was hard to make corrections to and could stain your hands purple. I self published a neighborhood magazine called "Bad". It was a take-off on "Mad" magazine. The neighbors were the victims of my comical stories and they looked forward to getting their copy every month.

Ah, those were the days!

Also had the use of one of the very first word processors. It predated the home computer, but unlike a typewriter, it did have a screen that showed something like 26 characters at a time. You could make corrections provided you caught them and backed up over them prior to hitting the "enter" key. But boy was it slow!

Give me a computer any day.

Jada59 said:

I have gotten that way too.

In doing a deep cleaning of my house, I found the first novel I wrote. Pen, paper and cursive. Made my eyes cross to look at it. I wrote that over 20 years ago. And even if I print in all caps, I still can't read it. My grocery lists even baffle me.

I also remember typing up poems on an old Royal typewriter. The kind that weighs a ton and doesn't have the ability to correct anything.

Prior to that, it was a ditto. One of those horrible things that was hard to make corrections to and could stain your hands purple. I self published a neighborhood magazine called "Bad". It was a take-off on "Mad" magazine. The neighbors were the victims of my comical stories and they looked forward to getting their copy every month.

Ah, those were the days!

Also had the use of one of the very first word processors. It predated the home computer, but unlike a typewriter, it did have a screen that showed something like 26 characters at a time. You could make corrections provided you caught them and backed up over them prior to hitting the "enter" key. But boy was it slow!

Give me a computer any day.

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Clearly, the past was some dark form of dystopian hell.

*shudder*

JasonClearwater said:

Clearly, the past was some dark form of dystopian hell.

*shudder*

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Yes. You younguns' don't know how good you have it!

"The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there".I love that quote, it is so apt and especially relevant to the computer age.

I was an early adopter. I had one of the first typewriters with a one-line memory. And then I had a 'computer' (quote unquote) with twin 5.5 inch floppy drives. I could write without the kit. But ....

JasonClearwater said:

Agreed. I can type as fast as I can speak - I can write approximately eight words a minute if I have to use a pen, and I won't be able to read any of them.

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Ever sat down determined to write w/a pencil and paper? Then it's like:"I miss my keyboard."

ThatsTheGuy said:

Ever sat down determined to write w/a pencil and paper? Then it's like:"I miss my keyboard."

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Grocery lists. That's about it. I can't imagine writing stories on paper. Haven't done that since I was a kid.

Sometimes when I don't have a computer handy I may jot notes for a story on paper, and incorporate them into the story later when I'm back at the computer. I don't use my phone for things like that because I find writing on the phone too cumbersome. Maybe it's my thumbs, but I don't enjoy it.

ThatsTheGuy said:

Ever sat down determined to write w/a pencil and paper? Then it's like:"I miss my keyboard."

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I never even learned to hold a pen properly. Trust me, I appreciate my keyboard. So much so that I have one that changes colour in waves when you press a key.

Jada59 said:

I have gotten that way too.

In doing a deep cleaning of my house, I found the first novel I wrote. Pen, paper and cursive.

Give me a computer any day.

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I did that too. I was cleaning house and re-arranging things. I opened this old box I've been grudgingly holding on to.

I found all sorts of old stuff in there. Then I picked up an old HS book report.

The book report was an "A-". There was a note next to the grade that read, "I would have given you an "A+" but your spelling is horrible."

Only in Chine do they restrict the internet to a point of taking it away

Kantarii said:

Only in Chine do they restrict the internet to a point of taking it away

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If the head of the FCC kills net neutrality like he's trying to do, the U.S. of A will be pretty close after the cable and phone companies finish charging everyone the max they can for everything.

This is me testing to see what the post title looks like

This topic came up in something I'm currently working on. I'm lazy, so I'll just cut/paste it here.

*because I can.*

Another reason to thank the computer.

***
I realized that I had a leg up on most other students at the time. I had a computer at home. I was able to edit at whim. I could easily change words, prod and push them around. Re-arrange things. Reorganize. All before scrolling a page at a time and transcribing it to the typewriter.

The typewriter was another thing. No one else typed their assignments. I HAD TO. My handwriting was so bad I honestly had trouble reading it myself a week later. This actually baffles me to this day. I have the steady hands of a surgeon. I built intricate models, and radio control planes, and sculpted tiny figures out of wax with a needle and X-Acto knife. I handle tiny screws and parts with great precision. But handwriting? No skill.

I took a typing class as soon as possible in high-school. Learning the keys by repetition was mind-numbing, but I did it. It changed my life. After I got my computer, I realized that the keyboard and I were friends. I didn't even have to think of my hands. I just thought words and they turned up on the screen. The keyboard didn't even exist. I could type while looking at someone as they dictated to me. There was no need to look at the screen. That's the real skill. Looking at a piece of paper and typing away, copying it. I wonder if that is taught any more?
***

(Here's another example: 'keyboard and me were friends.' That looked wrong. So I changed it. Then flipped back to the original text, and fixed it there as well, flipped back to this, and then shoehorned THIS text after the section that contained the error, and before the next example of copied text. Without computers, this kind of text insertion between existing paragraphs is not only impossible, the steps to divert to another page and back makes it often not worth the effort.)


again later in my text... emphasis added for this post...
***
I had it on my computer, saved on CASSETTE TAPE, but getting back into print meant transcribing it again by typewriter. Man oh fucking man, people will never understand how much life sucked before the PC came out.
***

Now other thoughts...
There were computers in school in 1982, but they were used for computer... things. There was a strange church/state separation between computers and everything else in those days. You didn't really use computers for much else than playing games and programming. And the programming was usually for making games.

Word processors sucked balls compared to now.

• They didn't check spelling.
• They weren't WYSIWYG, they were YAFIYGI (You Asked For It, You Got It). All your formatting had to be in special character notation. I'll bet people don't even know the expression WYSIWYG any more. You don't need to because everything IS, with no more need of the expression for comparison.
• They didn't have cut/paste. You could still move things around, but it wasn't easy; just possible. Your brain was the clipboard.
• I didn't have a printer. Neither were there any at the school. Why would you need a hard copy? You weren't writing on a computer, you were programming. Just save it to a disk!

I've read that James Ellroy wrote LA Confidential longhand. Holy bat shit. Then he had to go back and chop words to make a more trim novel length.

I would hate to meet him in person. I can imagine saying something wrong, accidentally insulting him, then finding myself on the floor as he tried to rip out my throat with his teeth. A savage of handwritten script. I'll bet he knows ways to kill with a person with a pencil. He's known as the "Demon dog of American crime fiction". God, I'd consider myself lucky to be known as the "Weiner dog" of something. Or maybe just "Hot dog". "Vienna sausage"?

(I think I'll coin that for myself, "The Vienna sausage of erotica". I wonder if it will stick?)

Computers for me, or I would have no way to express myself. Living in a cave, I couldn't write.

Before computers, I wouldn't write.

People who can write by hand also have a skill I don't. They write better out of the gate. They spell better. They use grammar better (no strikethrough? Barbaric!). They have a better command of grammar. Their editing process is no where near the same struggle as mine.

If I had to write long-hand, I would get nothing done, instead of little completed.

***
Interesting aside. Writing about things that happened in the eighties: Many expressions from today weren't used then. Robert Bloch (Psycho) once wrote a forward for a book. He noted that there were odd uses of modern slang that wouldn't have been used in the WWII era of the story, but accepted that modern audiences would fall more easily into the text as it was written.

I took it to heart, and when writing my current piece, thought back to the era of the eighties. We didn't use common words like 'text' when talking about writing (in my locale). We said 'work' or 'writing'. Strange little cliches have to be barred from the writing. Thankfully, I still remember all the old cliches. The odd stuff we just don't say any more. There ends up being a large list of expressions to keep out. Since it's a filter of omission, it doesn't really exist as a list of things to not say. Once I'm in the groove of thinking in that era, they just don't come up any more.

Aaaaaand now I'm rambling again. Oh well. This has been my 3 cents.

Oh... This is my first post. Hi everyone!

My father was a telegraphist. He sent telegrams on a machine that was made before 1914.

In his 80s he visited a telecommunications museum that had several examples of that telegraph machine. He talked at length to the Curator and was persuaded to demonstrate the machine he hadn't used since 1936.

They made a video of him using it after he had practised for about a quarter of an hour. He banged out 2,000+ words on that machine at an accurate speed of 160 words per minute.

He complained that he had been faster when young.

BUT - telegraph machines have no punctuation STOP And only use Capital letters STOP And just keep going with no carriage returns, tabs or other typewriter-like devices STOP They produce a strip of printing which is then literally cut and pasted onto a telegram form STOP END OF MESSAGE

In his 90s, even when his short-term memory was failing, he used to type his letters and accounts of his past on an electric typewriter at 80 to 90 words a minute.

oggbashan said:

.. And only use Capital letters STOP

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Oh my God that's right! The computers at school did only all caps! My home computer at least let me type in lower case.

There were no italics, no bold.

In the snow, up hill, both ways...

Even my phone exceeds the capabilities of my old system. Except for its silly input system.

ThatsTheGuy said:

I'm speaking of the internet, computers, and things of that nature that we embrace so easily - because it works for us. Right?

Think of all the wonderful things humans have accomplished since we began writing on stone tablets and caves. We can do it all over again if we really have to.

As for me? I'm happy with a simple pen and paper. Maybe a good book to read. If there are no books, we can create more. Yet, I digress. Please don't take away our wonderful internet. Our addiction to it will not fade quietly into the night.

In the world we grew up in, it's two-thousand something. The future is ours.

This has not been a service of the Emergency Broadcast System. Nor is it a Public Service Announcement. Just don't take the girl.

We now return to your regular programing. Same bat channel, same bat time.

Click to expand...

We probably don't need the 'Net, but I think we really DO need the writing tools.

Handley_Page said:

We probably don't need the 'Net, but I think we really DO need the writing tools.

Click to expand...

Can't research without the 'net...

JasonClearwater said:

Can't research without the 'net...

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You can but it takes more work. A lot more work.